As surging temperatures had unsparingly beaten down energy facilities in this year’s El Niño stricken summer months, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) indicated that ‘heat wave’ will be added as metrics in determining the reliability indices for power facilities, primarily the electric generating assets.

“The heat wave – it will already be factored in when we set the reliability indices for power plants,” ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta stressed; adding that they have been looking at the experience of other markets on the impact of sun-burnt planet to the electric generating facilities.

The reliability index, which is also referred to as ‘adequacy or availability index’, typically sets the allowable outages for power facilities – be it for scheduled downtime or on their forced outages either due to technical glitches or external factors, including heat wave and other natural calamities.

Within two-week period in April, power plants across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao had been stretched beyond their limits – and that had been greatly attributed to the fiery impact of record-high heat indices that have surging from 45 degrees to more than 50 degrees.

The vulnerability of the power generating assets to ‘excessive heat’ had prompted both the ERC and the Department of Energy (DOE) to study and consider new elements or constituents that could affect the operational chain of the country’s power system.

On ERC’s part, Dimalanta specified that their technical team had done studies which pored over into the damaging impact of heat wave on power facilities – mainly taking cue from what other power markets had to live through when mercury rises.

The ERC chief emphasized it is the first time that all-time high weather temperatures had plagued the country, hence, compromising the operations of many power plants with combined trigger from the soaring heat as well as dwindling water supplies which also strained the cooling systems of energy facilities.

“In other jurisdictions, like in 2003, there was a heat wave in France that affected their nuclear plants that reduced the capacity of their nuclear plants by 4,000 megawatts because of the heat,” Dimalanta conveyed.

She further noted that the same incidents of power plant breakdowns hobbled the electricity systems of California in 2006; as well as Australia in 2007 and 2008.

“We looked at different jurisdictions; and we also referred this to the DOE – because we can’t have all of the answers on the regulatory side – part of the response measures shall come from the DOE,” Dimalanta asserted.

She expounded “a lot of planning is required,” hence, the ERC is targeting that the new reliability indices for power plants as well as those for the other segments in the industry – including transmission and distribution - could be updated by next year.

“Some of the response measures will require capacity, some form of infrastructure or capacity improvements for our substations, for our lines, for our generation units,” the ERC chief said.