414-MW San Gabriel power plant restarts operations after rehab job

By Alena Mae S. Flores – February 16, 2021 at 06:45 pm
from manilastandard.net

First Gen Corp. said Tuesday the 414-megawatt San Gabriel Combined Cycle Power Plant in Batangas started recommissioning following the completion of repairs to the generator.

The power plant was damaged after a trip that occurred in September 2020.

“The plant was successfully restarted and placed online on Feb. 15, 2021, as part of planned ongoing recommissioning activities,” First Gen said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

“The recommissioning activities are scheduled to last for up to three days and are necessary to confirm that the San Gabriel plant is performing as designed, before it resumes normal commercial operations,” the company said.

It said preliminary tests conducted by Siemens Power Operations Inc. on unit 70 of the power plant showed an electrical fault in the generator.

The power plant tripped on Sept. 5, 2020 because of the activation of generator protection.

It started commercial operations on Nov. 7, 2016 and utilizes Siemens’ SCC6-8000H combined-cycle gas turbine, which is designed to offer operational flexibility.

It is one of the four natural gas-fired power plants at the First Gen Clean Energy Complex in Batangas which also hosts the 1,000-MW Santa Rita, the 500-MW San Lorenzo and the 97-MW Avion power plants.

The Santa Rita, San Lorenzo, and San Gabriel power plants deliver baseload power, while the Avion power plants capitalizes on the growing demand for peaking power in the Luzon grid.

First Gen has 3,492 MW of installed capacity in its portfolio of clean and indigenous fuels such as natural gas, geothermal energy from steam, hydro-electric, wind and solar power which accounts for 21 percent of the country’s gross generation.