The recurring forced outages of power plants triggered another wave of "yellow alert" or insufficiency of power reserves in the Luzon grid on Monday, Dec. 5, as declared by system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.
Yellow alert in the grid had been raised from 1:00 to 4:00pm; and then at evening peak from 5:00pm to 7:00pm, according to the system operator.
With precarious supply due to the forced outages of the power generating facilities, NGCP indicated that available capacity in the system hovered at 10,708 megawatts; while peak demand was projected to reach 10,246MW.
As advised to the industry stakeholders, the yellow alert was triggered by the unplanned shutdown of the 668-megawatt unit 2 of the GNPower Dinginin plant, which is a joint venture of the Aboitiz and Ayala groups.
The other plants which had not been available in the system were the 316MW unit 1 of GNPower Mariveles coal plant (also an Aboitiz-Ayala JV); the 335MW unit 3 of the Masinloc coal-fired plant of the San Miguel group; and the 300MW Unit 2 Calaca coal plant of the Consunji group.
The system operator similarly stated that several plants had de-rated capacities: including unit 1 of the Masinloc generating facility of which capacity had been reduced to 250MW from 315MW; Masinloc unit 2 with lower available capacity of 285MW from 344MW; and Sual plant’s unit 1 which had slashed generation of 310MW vis-à-vis its installed capacity of 647MW.
“Four power plants are on forced outage; while three others are running on de-rated capacities, for a total of 2,080MW unavailable to the grid,” the transmission firm stressed.
ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta had given word that the regulatory body “will look into the cause (of the plant outages), then proceed accordingly.”
This is already the second instance of ‘yellow alert condition’ in the country’s biggest power grid this month; while ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ alerts were declared last November 28.
In the past two weeks, the worst that happened in the grid was last November 27, when supply had been extremely strained and rotational brownouts had to be enforced in various areas in Metro Manila, as well as in neighboring provinces.
The very frequent instances of yellow alert, as well as the sporadic incidents of ‘red alert’ have been igniting industry jitters because these are happening even when temperatures are colder, which entails then that system demand is lower.
Typically, summer months are the period when electricity demand would peak because of scorching weather conditions, and 2023 is seen teetering on a very dangerous state given the supply shortfall already being experienced in Luzon, which is the economic center of the country.