Luzon on yellow alert as plant-maintenance closures cut reserves

By Lenie Lectura – November 5, 2019
from Business Mirror

LUZON was placed on yellow alert notice on Monday (November 4) due to insufficient operating reserves mainly brought about by the shutdown on five major power plants.

The three-hour yellow alert occurred from 1 to 4 p.m., the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) declared.

“Today, will be the 46th day affected by a yellow alert this 2019,” said Lawrence Fernandez, utility economics head of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco). He said this is on top of the 14 days of red alerts.

A yellow alert is issued when operating reserves have dropped below the required 647 MW contingency in Luzon, or equivalent to the largest unit in Luzon—the 647 MW coal-fired power plant in Sual, Pangasinan.

A red alert notice is raised when there is severe power deficiency and zero contingency reserve.  When the red alert is issued, power interruptions are expected.

The Sual plant was on forced outage while unit 2 (50 MW) of the Avion natural gas plant of Lopez-led First Gen Corp. was still on maintenance shutdown.

Meanwhile, two power plants did not deliver their full output, which contributed to the grid’s thin reserve.

These are Calaca 1 (from 300 MW to 240 MW) and Masinloc 1 (from 315 MW to 280 MW).

Shortly after the yellow alert was issued, one module of Ilijan power plant delivering 190 MW tripped out at 9:44 a.m.

Earlier, a lawmaker commented that yellow and red alert warnings are sending the wrong signals to investors.

“That’s not a good signal because part of the business sector’s requirement is stable electricity. For all industrialized countries, you have the basics like steel and cement industry, car manufacturing, but all this requires energy and power. What if you have red alert and yellow alert? Who will set up big plants here? It’s not a good signal to the business industries especially if you want to attract foreign investors,” said Senate Energy Committee Head Sherwin Gatchalian, in a mix of English and Filipino.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) earlier said it wants a study conducted on power plant outages in the country.

Image Credits: Nonie Reyes