NGCP cuts frequency of electricity outages

by Myrna Velasco – September 23, 2016

from Manila Bulletin

For the seventh straight year, the experienced forced outages of the National Grid Corporation of the Phillippes (NGCP) had been down and allowed it to even exceed performance targets.

The company said it logged improved performance across all domains, with the biggest power grid in Luzon reducing outages by 73-percent.

Visayas, for its part, also pared its forced outages by 86-percent; while Mindanao had been lowered by 67-percent.

The system operator has explained that frequency of tripping (FOT) “is a key performance indicator which measures the number of times the high-voltage transmission lines tripped or experienced forced outages for every 100 circuit-kilometers.”

It expounded that to achieve improved performance, “several system upgrades and facility expansions were implemented.”

In particular, NGCP said “Luzon grid’s rating this year is higher compared to the 2015 figure of 99.4125-percent.” The other grids also maintained the same ratings last year.

The other index that was measured had been on congestion availability indicator (ConA), which in particular, delves with measuring the congestion experienced by lines identified as critical.

That is the same yardstick that gauges the loss severely impacting on the operations of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market. NGCP said it posted 99.72-percent rating on this compared to last year’s 99.583-percent in 2015.

The NGCP further noted that all three grids reported an almost 100-percent compliance “with voltage and frequency limits.”

Such limits, as pointed out, are measured by the percentage of timing “during a given period that the system frequency or voltage,” set within allowable limits.