Luzon grid under red, yellow alerts for 3rd straight day

The Luzon power grid has been placed under red and yellow alerts again on Friday amid depleting power reserves resulting from outages of several power plants.

In an advisory, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said the red alert status was raised from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

This is the third straight day that the highest alert was in place in the Luzon grid.

A red alert is a system condition in which there is zero ancillary services or a generation deficiency exists.

The grid operator said the Luzon grid has an available capacity of 10,220 MW against a peak demand of 10,334 MW.

Meanwhile, a yellow alert was raised in two intervals for the day, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Yellow alert refers to a condition in which the reserves are less than the capacity of the biggest plant online, which is 647 megawatts for Luzon.

According to the Department of Energy (DOE), the alert statuses were triggered by the unplanned outages of the following plants:

• San Miguel Consolidated Power Corp. (SCPC) Unit 2 (150MW)
• Sual Unit I of Team Energy and San Miguel (647MW)
• Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp. (SLPGC) Unit 2 of DMCI (150 MW)
• Pagbilao Unit 3 of Team Energy and Aboitiz Power (420MW); and
• South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp. (SLTEC) Unit 1 of Ayala (135MW)

Additional losses of megawatts were due to the de-rated capacity of DMCI's Calaca Unit 2 to 100 MW from 200 MW declared capacity.

Also, there were around 827 MW of losses from previously approved outages due to scheduled maintenance.

The NGCP said in may implement Manual Load Dropping (MLD) — meaning power interruptions can be expected — in the following areas from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. “to maintain the integrity of the power system”:

• ISECO (parts of Ilocos Sur)
• LUELCO (parts of La Union)
• QUEZELCO II (parts of Quezon)
• TARELCO II (parts of Tarlac and Nueva Ecija)
• MERALCO (parts of Metro Manila).

However, the grid operator said the scheduled MLD may be cancelled if system condition improves, such as if actual demand falls below projections.

“Details on the cause to be announced by the Department of Energy (DOE) later in the day,” the NGCP said. —KBK, GMA News