NGCP targets Mindanao grid reinforcement by 2019

By Myrna M. Velasco – October 12, 2017, 10:01 PM

from Manila Bulletin

Following last weekend’s partial blackout in Mindanao, the country’s power system operator has announced that it will be completing reinforcement at the grid by the first quarter of 2019.

That would be ahead of the June, 2019 completion target, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has emphasized.

The needed strengthening of the power system pillar in the southernmost power grid is via the Mindanao 230-kilovolt (kV) transmission project, primarily to support the capacity wheeling of additional power plants installed in the area.

Fundamentally, this venture covered the reinforcement of the 138kV Matanao-Toril-Bunawan and 230kV Balo-i-Maramag-Bunawan transmission lines.

NGCP stressed that “various key substations will also be upgraded in order to accommodate the line and the additional power expected to flow through the system.”

It explained that once this transmission backbone is in place, it would be able to “accommodate renewable and conventional power plants in the northern and southern part of Mindanao.”

In turn, this could shore up power capacity flux from Lanao del Norte, through to Agusan del Sur and all the way up to Davao del Sur.

NGCP has primarily indicated that the transmission project’s completion would enable optimized connection of the power plants of GNPower and San Miguel Global Power Holdings to the grid, thus, “mitigating the once known vulnerabilities of hydropower and maximizing the generating capability of incoming plants.”

This backbone is similarly considered a critical component of the long-planned Visayas-Mindanao Interconnection Project (VMIP), in which NGCP intends to concretize as targeted in the next 46 months.

NGCP expounded that “the Mindanao backbone is key to the VMIP because it provides the transmission highway to accommodate the capacity which the interconnection needs for it to be fully utilized by both Visayas and Mindanao.”