Luzon on red alert over insufficient power supply

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Luzon on red alert over insufficient power supply
Brownouts of up to 3 hours occur in Luzon as some power plants go offline

MANILA, Philippines – Luzon was on placed on “red alert” Saturday, July 12, due to  insufficient power supply following the shutdown of several power plants. 

Brownouts of up to 3 hours occurred in Luzon as some power plants went offline,  including the 1,200-megawatt Ilijan combined-cycle power plant in Batangas, which had to undergo PIGing  (Pipeline Inspection Gauge) activities, the Calaca coal-fired power plant, and Unit 1 of the Masinloc power plant.

The Ilijan power facility, operated by Kepco Philippines Incorporated, is one of the three natural gas plants supplying 30 to 40% of Luzon’s energy requirements. The PIGing process is necessary to eliminate accumulated deposits, which affect the overall productivity of the facility.

An operational problem has placed on shutdown Unit 1 of the Masinloc power since July 10. Unit 2 continues to supply approximately 315 MW of capacity.

AES Philippines, which operates the coal-fired thermal plant, said it is “working to rectify the situation and is committed to safely returning the unit to service.”

“We expect the situation to be resolved as soon as possible. We are closely monitoring the situation given the plant’s criticality to the reliable operation of the Luzon grid,” said AES.

Rotating brownout

Customers of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) experienced rotating power outages which started at 10:27 a.m on Saturday.

“We have an ongoing rotating brownout in Metro Manila from 10:30 am to 2:30 pm.  I can’t tell which part but at any given time we are looking at 5 to 6 percent of consumers affected. Others will not experience brownout at all,” Energy Secretary Carlos Jerico Petilla said on Saturday.

The Department of Energy had announced rotating brownouts this weekend due to the shutdown of some power plants.

The lack of power supply prompted distribution utilities to implement rotating brownouts or manual load dropping (MLD) so as to distribute supply to all the areas it serves.

Meralco officials said the affected areas in the MLD as of 11 am on Saturday included portions of Tutuban, Calumpit, Bacoor, Grace Park, Meycauayan, Marilao and Sta Maria.

The duration of the brownout lasted two to 3 hours but Meralco’s MLD program lasted up to 4 pm, and from 6 pm to 9 pm on Saturday.

“Rotating power interruptions lasting up to 3 hours started to be implemented in portions of Meralco franchise area due to supply deficiency….As of 12:30 pm, 27 circuits have been dropped affecting around 240,000 customers,” said Meralco spokesperson Joe Zaldariaga and Meralco head for utility economics Lawrence Fernandez in separate text messages to reporters.

Asked how Meralco determines which area should experience MLD, Zaldariaga said Meralco’s residential and commercial circuits are grouped into areas from the northern part, going to Makati, Manila, Quezon City. The other part of the circuit group includes Pasay and Parañaque, among others.

 “Our MLD planner measures the circuit load from these groups whose demand at a particular time would match the projected deficiency at a given interval,” he said. 

Meralco’s franchise area covers 31 cities and 80 municipalities including Metro Manila, the entire provinces of Bulacan, Rizal and Cavite; parts of the provinces of Laguna, Quezon, Batangas and Pampanga. Electrification level in the franchise area is 99%.

The franchise area is home to 25.5 million people or roughly a fourth of the entire Philippine population of 94 million. 

‘ILP helped ease outages’

Zaldiriaga also said that the extent of the power outage was partly mitigated by Meralco’s  Interruptible Load Program (ILP).

Under the ILP, customers with large loads, like commercial establishments, will be asked to operate their own generator sets if the grid operator, which is the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), projects a need to augment generation capacity in the Luzon grid.

Through this, the aggregate demand for power from the system will be reduced to a more manageable level, helping ensure the availability of supply during the season.

With the ILP, power supply from the grid that will not be consumed by participating customers will be available for use by other customers within the franchise area.

Meralco had invited more than 100 companies with large backup generating sets to participate in the ILP. – Rappler.com

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