Luzon grid plunged into new round of power interruptions

As Luzon grid descended into new round of red alert that was prompted by the tripping of a major power plant, consumers are left with no choice but to suffer through inconvenience and relive the stress of waiting for another wave of spikes in their electric bills.

System operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has declared ‘red alert’ condition for Luzon from 1:00 to 5:00pm; then from 6:00 to 9:00pm; while yellow alert persisted from 12:00 to 1:00pm, then at 5:00 to 6:00pm and 100:00pm until 12 midnight.

But even prior to NGCP’s move on raising the alert status for the country’s biggest power grid, it was noted that momentary brownouts already distressed consumers at close to Wednesday midnight from 11:41pm to 11:49pm – and that was prompted by the tripping of one unit (with 647-megawatt capacity) of the Sual coal-fired power plant in Pangasinan.

According to plant operator TeaM Energy Philippines, the plant suffered technical glitch in its “reheat stop valve” or RSV minimum system protection, that’s why it suffered sudden forced outage.

The plant, which is under independent power producer administrator (IPPA) agreement following the privatization of its supply contract by the state-run Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) will be turned over to SMC Global Power Holdings of the San Miguel Group by October this year. The facility has two generating units for aggregate capacity of 1,294MW.

The areas affected by the service interruptions on Wednesday evening had been parts of Metro Manila, as well as those in Pampanga, Bulacan, Laguna, Rizal and Quezon – and impacted customers hovered at 270,000.

By 1:00 to 2:00pm Thursday (May 23), NGCP cautioned that service interruptions or rotational brownouts may affect consumers in Nueva Ecija, Ifugao, parts of Pangasinan, Bataan, Tarlac, Lipa City; then down to Sorsogon and Albay.

The grid operator indicated that the brownout-schedules may be cancelled “if the system condition improves,” including instances when demand would fall or supply would be reinforced as the plants on outage may be synchronized back to the grid.

Based on data culled from NGCP, there were already seven (7) instances of red alert in the Luzon grid from January this year; while Visayas logged eight (8) incidents of red alert.

For yellow alert incidents, Visayas was also the topnotcher with 22 days; then Luzon came in close second with 20 days; while Mindanao registered two (2) days of yellow alerts.

With the return of extremely strained power supply, Manila Electric Company (Meralco) Spokesperson and Head of Corporate Communications Joe Zaldarriaga stated that they have already alerted their customer-participants in the interruptible load program (ILP) to be ready with their facilities once grid supply de-loading will be called upon.

“Meralco already advised the ILP participants for their de-loading commitments to help ease and manage the demand in the Luzon power grid,” he stressed.

The utility firm executive similarly intensified relentless plea to the public to “continue practicing energy conservation and efficiency measures as a way to help in contributing to demand side management.”

Zaldarriaga further assured Meralco customers that they are ready “in the event of a possible  implementation of manual load dropping or rotating power interruptions as part of our responsibility to manage the system.” — Myrna M. Velasco