By Lenie Lectura - May 13, 2019
Last updated on May 13th, 2019 at 02:55 am
THE under-5 mortality rate in children
is always a priority concern for health authorities, and when it comes to power
plants, new ones—meaning, operational in just five years or less—that conk out
are causing worry to regulators still reeling from the fallout of recent
unscheduled brownouts in Luzon.
The Energy Regulatory Commission
(ERC) said it was “disturbing” to find out that relatively new power plants
conked out more than 20 times from March 5 to April 25 this year.
“This is a very interesting slide
because zero to five years so far exceeded the 26 to 30-year-old plants…[the]
zero to five power plants [conking out is] disturbing,” said ERC Chairman Agnes
Devanadera.
The ERC chief was referring to the
data presented to media last Friday. Based on the “Distribution of Plants in
Outage by Age” from March 5 to April 25, power plants with age zero to five
years encountered more than 20 outage incidents during the period.
Meanwhile, power plants aged 26 to
30 years old recorded nearly 20 outage incidents, followed by plants 16 to 20
years old with nearly 10 outage incidents; plants over 30 years with over five
outage incidents; and 21 to 25 year old plants with nearly five plant outages
during the period.
“Plants that are 16 years old and
above contributed 62 percent of the plant outage from March 5 to April 25. The
26 to 30, we can say that it’s because of wear and tear. But the zero to five,
we are still looking at their reasons for outage,” said ERC Spokesman Atty.
Rexie Digal.
According to ERC commissioner
Catherine Paredes Maceda, owners of the new power plants told the agency that
power plants—whether old or new—are complicated.
“We called them to a meeting. Their
explanation was that, it doesn’t follow that just because a plant is new it
won’t break down; they said a power plant is complicated,” Maceda said.
Regulators, added Maceda, “are also
looking at what technology they utilized, the materials, etc. Because of what
happened, we are closely looking at the certificate of compliance.”
The ERC recently conducted site
inspections of the following plants: GN Power Mariveles coal plant of AC Energy
Inc. and Aboitiz Power Corp.; SCPC (San Miguel Consolidated Power Corp.) Limay
coal plant; SLTEC 1(South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp.); Santa Rita power plant
of First Gen Power Corp.; SLTEC 2; SLPGC 2 (Southwest Luzon Power Generation
Corp.); Pagbilao 3 of Team Energy Corp. and Aboitiz; state firm’s Malaya 1; and
Sual 1 of Team Energy.
“Boiler tube leak” was the reason
provided by the owners and operators of GN Power Mariveles and SLTEC 1 for the
outage.
Pagbilao 3 experienced “boiler
slagging” while Sual 1 reported “boiler circulating pump piping leak.”
A “motor boiler pump trouble” was
reported by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM),
which operates the Malaya plant.
SCPC Limay coal plant experienced
“high furnace pressure.”
A “gas line vent valve trouble” was
reported by FGEN Santa Rita.
A tripping of the manual turbine was
experienced at SLTEC 2 plant.
Meanwhile, SLPGC 2 blamed “primary
air fan, high stator winding temperature and primary air fan B high motor
bearing vibration” as the cause of the outage.
“As a background, we are seeing that
30 percent of our plants that are 30 years and above would constitute 15
percent of the capacity,” Digal said.
“We still have, I think the biggest
[batch]—29.8 percent will be 16 to 20 years in operation,” and followed by the
21 to 25-year age group accounting for 23 percent of capacity. The oldest batch
of plants, aged 30 and above, constitute 15 percent.
Plants that are six to 10
years old account for around 10 percent of capacity and the newest, or from
zero to five, around 15 percent.
“We found that 16 years and above
plants in operation constitute 72 percent of the Luzon capacity,” said Digal.
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