In line with its warning of thin power supply during the summer months, system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is being required by the Department of Energy (DOE) to contract ample power reserves.
The DOE directive is to ensure available capacity augmentation when yellow and red alert conditions in the grid will manifest.
In a statement to the media, the energy department indicated that it is directing NGCP to address several concerns in the power system before the strike of the summer months – not just on the issue of power reserves but also in ensuring power plant connections; and on decongestion of lines for the wheeling of capacities.
“The DOE is very interested to hear from them (NGCP) about the steps they have taken, or are taking, to address the situation, particularly in preventing the occurrence of a power interruption,” the agency stressed.
The energy department pointed out that the reserves must be “contracted from a separate pool of capacity for ancillary services which we can tap in cases of emergency.”
Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi, in particular, stated that he has instructed the Electric Power Industry Management Bureau (EPIMB) of the DOE to look into the preparations carried out by the system operator to guarantee uninterrupted electricity services, especially when demand would peak within the April-June period.
The energy department added NGCP will need to ensure that “all capacities of all power stations are available.” In the real sense of power system operations though, that is not a function of the grid operator but it should be the generation companies.
On a yearly basis, it has been the forced outages of power plants that have been turning as culprit in power supply predicaments – and that is a puzzling dilemma that both the DOE and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) have been failing to address until this time.
To date, the DOE is sounding off that it is “spearheading efforts to bring the power industry together to work toward a holistic solution.”
Alongside its initiatives, the DOE emphasized that NGCP must “contribute to the adequacy of supply, and more so this year as we will be holding national elections this summer.”
Further, the DOE has prompted the system operator to guarantee that the Grid Operating Maintenance Program (GOMP) or the schedule of preventive maintenance shutdowns of power generating facilities are “thoroughly planned.”
NGCP earlier specified that in the scheduling of power plant downtimes for repair and maintenance activities, the entire duration of the summer months had already been avoided, so all the plant-capacities have to be made available on these periods.