Brownouts may resume this week; plants still offline

The threat of brownouts will continue to hang over Luzon consumers this week as plants expected to have begun feeding power to the grid yesterday remained offline. Actual outages, however, would depend on how deep in the red overall capacity falls, industry officials said, with a loss of up to 400 megawatts (MW) described as still bearable. In a report, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said the Malampaya deepwater gas-to-power facility, scheduled to have become operational last Saturday, remained in "continued maintenance with expected completion by March 11." Malampaya feeds natural gas to the 1,200-MW Ilijan plant of Korea Electric Power Corp. and the 500-MW San Lorenzo and 1,000-MW Sta. Rita of First Gas Corp. Ilijan is in total shutdown while Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo are producing 500 MW each using more expensive liquid condensate. Malampaya’s preventive maintenance was initially scheduled to end on March 11. Energy Secretary Angelo T. Reyes, however, told reporters last month that the schedule would be cut by five days. Since this was not met, the NGCP said "power reserves will continue to be lean in the coming week." Jesusito H. Sulit, senior adviser to the NGCP president, said outages could recur during the week. "If a 300- to 400-MW plant trips, we can still sustain it, but if it’s a 600-MW plant, we are in trouble," Sulit said in Filipino. The NGCP said at the weekend that Sta Rita’s modules 30 and 10 would be online on Sunday evening, while a "forced outage" at the Calaca Unit 1 would last "until March 12 due to technical problems." "It is expected that Kepco’s Malaya plant will be operational during the week to augment the power supply," it added. The NGCP said power interruptions in the Visayas would also likely occur this week — despite the entry of Cebu Energy Development Corp.’s 82-MW Unit 1 plant — "due to the continued shutdown of the Cebu Thermal Power Plant (50 MW) Unit 2 operated by Salcon Power Corp." In Mindanao, power outages will continue to bedevil consumers as hydroelectric plant output remains deeply compromised by a continuing dry spell. As of Sunday — a low demand day — Luzon had reserves of 787 MW, with capacity at 6,797 MW against a peak load of 6,010 MW. The Visayas grid, meanwhile, had reserves of 94 MW, with available capacity at 1,167 MW and peak demand of 1,073 MW. The Mindanao grid was 652 MW in the red, with a peak load of 1,393 MW against available capacity of just 741 MW. — Jose Bimbo F. Santos, BusinessWorld