Cooler weather averts outages in Meralco franchise

Cooler weather averted one-hour brownouts in the franchise area of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) that would have lasted from 10a.m. Tuesday to 4 a.m. Wednesday. Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said the power distributor had scheduled a manual load dropping program, which would have switched supply from one area to another within the grid, but did not push through with it because of lower system demand. [See: Meralco rotational brownouts to hit Metro Manila] With the onset of the rainy season, the temperature dropped from peaks of 38° Celsius last week to 34° Tuesday, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Administration. Zaldarriaga said Luzon's system demand was placed at 6,926 megawatts (MW) against National Grid Corporation of the Philippines' earlier forecast of 7,224 MW. "So there is no need for load shedding because the actual load was lower than the system-demand forecast." National Grid, the operator of the country's transmission highway, acts as system operator of the Luzon grid. The Luzon grid was on "red alert status" Tuesday morning in anticipation of peak demands of up to 7,402 MW versus the generating capacity of 6,957 MW, or an anticipated shortage of 445 MW, Meralco said. National Grid said a 600-MW unit of the Masinloc coal-fired power plant has not been running since May 29 because of a "boiler tube leak." The Masinloc plant is expected to come online on Thursday. It said the 620-MW Limay power plant, owned by San Miguel Corp., is also under maintenance shutdown until June 4, while the 345-MW San Roque hydroelectric plant is not running for a scheduled tunnel inspection next Monday. The 250-MW San Lorenzo natural gas power plant is down with a steam leak, and is expected to return to the grid before midnight. National Grid said Visayas and Mindanao are also on "red alert status" because of insufficient generating capacities. Visayas had a generation capacity of 1,150 MW and a peak demand of 1,319 MW, or a shortage of 169 MW. Mindanao is also short of 294 MW, with demand placed at 1,282 MW versus a capacity of 988 MW. Power from the Agus hydroelectric plants are still limited because of low water elevation in its supply dam, the National Grid said. —VS, GMANews.TV