With alarm bells raised on highly probable rotational blackouts during the summer months, the country’s generation companies (GenCos) are being warned that breach of regulatory policy on ‘force outage caps’ will not be tolerated, hence, they shall be ready to be meted anew with penalties.

“Non-adherence to our regulatory policies is non-negotiable, Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) Chairperson Agnes T. Devanadera has stated; as she also emphasized that the long arm of the law will definitely catch up with the erring industry players.

The ERC chief stressed “we will exercise the punitive powers accorded to ERC by the EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform Act) to ensure that electricity consumers’ interests are promoted and protected in terms of uninterruptible power supply.”

Last year, the ERC has penalized at least 10 GenCos that it established to have transgressed the reliability standards being enforced on power plant operations – chiefly those that have breached the ‘unplanned outage’ caps set per technology.

In December 2020, the ERC issued a resolution prescribing the allowable outage days of all power plants across technologies – including the scheduled downtimes for repair works or scheduled maintenance activities and the ‘unplanned’ or forced outages.

On forced outage caps, the number of days set by the ERC had been 16.8 days for pulverized coal technology; 16.9 days for plants using circulating fluidized bed boiler; 7.7 days for combined cycle plants; and 22.7 days for gas turbine generating assets.

For diesel plants, the permitted scale of unplanned outages had been set at 14 days; geothermal at 13.7 days; hydroelectric at 6.8 days; oil-fired thermal plants at 27.8 days; and biomass at 7.0 days.

On the scheduled shutdowns, plants utilizing pulverized coal technology are allowed maintenance downtimes of 27.9 days; CFB plants for 15.4 days; combined cycle plants are given 12.5 days; and gas turbine facilities for 6.5 days.

Additionally, diesel plants can opt for scheduled repair or shutdown of 5.0 days; geothermal for 6.0 days; hydroelectric for 23.1 days; oil-fired thermal for 30.8 days and biomass for 32.7 days.

The planned preventive maintenance shutdowns of power plants are integrated in the Grid Operating and Maintenance Program (GOMP) that the system operator will be coordinating with the power plant owners and operators and to be duly submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE) for its concurrence and approval.

For this year, the energy department has strictly directed the generation companies to avoid preventive maintenance schedules during the summer months - except for hydro plants, and that’s because of the critical supply-demand scenario manifesting in Luzon grid’s power outlook.

With ‘more disciplined operations’ of the power plants leading to downscaled forced outages in generating units, the DOE is expecting that Luzon grid can still keep away from ‘red alerts’ or power service interruptions even with the cyclical demand surge during the summer months.