By Amy R. Remo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE 2) The National Grid Corp. (NGCP) of the Philippines has put the whole Luzon Grid on red alert due to a power generation deficiency on the island, following the outage at one of the Sual power plant's units.
Carlito Claudio, NGCP vice president for systems operations, explained that the red alert meant that the Luzon grid did not have reserves that could be used to address the temporary power supply deficiency caused by this outage.
Claudio said in a phone interview that the reserve of the Luzon grid during peak load was only 100 megawatts.
But he also said that he had received word from the operator of the Sual power plant that it had begun restoration works at the unit.
As of 5 p.m. on Monday, Claudio said they were expecting the rotating brownouts to last only until 9 p.m. of the same day.
Prior to the tripping of the Sual unit, Claudio disclosed that the Luzon grid was already on "yellow alert," which meant that it had "thin power reserves".
As such, affected distribution utility Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) had begun implementing since Monday, two-hour rotating brownouts in Metro Manila and nearby provinces, particularly in parts of Marikina, Manila, Quezon City, Bulacan and Cavite.
Areas affected by the Manual Load Dropping (MLD) , between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. were the following:
* Manila -- Sta. Ana, Pandacan, Sta. Mesa, Quiapo, Tondo and Sta. Cruz;
* Makati -- Palanan;
* Quezon City -- Barangay South Triangle, Paltok, San Francisco Del Monte
* Laguna - Portion of municipalities of Sta. Cruz, San Pablo and San Pedro
* Bulacan - Major portion of municipalities of Guiguinto, Plaridel, Norzagaray and Angat.
Meralco, which distributes some 300MW of electricity coming from the Sual unit 1, said the unit tripped at 12:41 p.m. on Monday. The outage was due to a feed water pump trouble at the unit, which has a generation capability of 525MW.
Prior to implementing rotating brownouts, automatic power outages had occurred in several areas in Metro Manila while the Sual unit 1, generating 350MW at that time, had tripped.
Meralco said it would continue to monitor the situation and assured its customers that it would provide timely updates. The distribution utility added that it would be ready to render electric service to its customers inconvenienced by the lack of power supply.
According to Joe Zaldarriaga, Meralco external communications manager, the company remains unsure until when it shall implement the rotating brownouts, stressing that it would depend on what measures to be taken by the operators of the power facilities and by the NGCP.
The 1,000MW Sual coal-fired power plant in Pangasinan is composed of two units and is currently being run and managed by Team Energy.
It was built in 1996 to ease the energy crisis then. The station started providing electricity to the Luzon grid in October 1999 through a 1,000MW Energy Conversion Agreement with the National Power Corp. under a 25-year build-operate-transfer scheme.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
