No sanctions committed yet by DOE, ERC
By Myrna M. Velasco – September 14, 2022, 3:14 PM
from Manila Bulletin
The Department of Energy (DOE) and Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) are taking steps to investigate and verify the technical glitches in power plants and transmission line tripping that caused the September 11 brownouts and the subsequent red alert in the Luzon grid on Monday (September 12), but there are no commitments of enforcing sanctions on the erring power industry players.
The ERC, in particular, has stated in an advisory that it will “verify” the cause of power plant outages, as submitted by system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) – but there had been no timeline given on when the regulatory agency will finish its investigation.
For his part, Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla had given word that “a team from the DOE will conduct actual physical spot checks and validate the condition of the transmission lines and the affected power plants,” but until now, there are no updates provided by the agency on any outcome of its field investigation.
There are warning signs that the wobbly power supply situation in the main power grid of Luzon may still continually trigger either rotational blackouts or ‘red alert conditions’ due to insufficiency of reserves in the power system, but the key agencies of government have not been laying down concrete solutions yet; if only for the Filipino consumers to be spared from the double whammy of unwanted blackouts and spikes in electricity rates.
In the past administration, the ERC had imposed penalties on the power plants which breached their allowable forced outages – hence for some time, that was perceived to have ‘disciplined’ some of the habitually delinquent power generation companies.
To date, the new heads of the DOE and the ERC are still being prodded to exercise ‘toughness’ in policing the country’s power supply as well as the industry’s regulation – that is, if they are really serious in prioritizing consumer welfare, rather than just allow inefficient players to be set free from their lapses.
An initial report submitted by NGCP to the ERC stipulated that the root cause of the forced outage on the 668-megawatt unit 1 of the Dinginin coal-fired plant has been due to “turbine vibration rectification,” while the 300MW Unit 2 of the Calaca coal-fired plant suffered unplanned outage due to “generator high vibration refinement activities.”
For the 460MW Quezon power plant, the ERC advisory indicated that the unscheduled shutdown was on account of a technical glitch caused by “primary air fan A broken inlet vane linkage.”
On the units 1 and 2 of the Sual plant with 647MW capacity each, it was reported that the forced outage had been traced to an “external fault” after the tripping of the 500-kilovolt Bolo-Nagsaag transmission line of NGCP; and it was the same trigger for the sudden shutdown of the 344MW Unit 2 of the Masinloc plant; as well as the 335MW Masinloc 3 generating unit.
The ERC emphasized that of the affected power plants, four out of the seven generating units “were due to tripping of Bolo-Nagsaag 500kV transmission lines 1 and 2…the remaining three (3) generating units were already on outage prior to the occurrence of the grid tripping incident.”
On its field investigation, the regulatory body qualified that it will “verify all these reports submitted by NGCP and the generating companies – including the actions done to get it back online.”
Relative to the tripping of the Bolo-Nagsaag line, the ERC conveyed that it will dig into “the cause of the tripping and the actions taken by the NGCP to repair the subject line, including the reasons why the generating units were not able to get back online with the restoration of the transmission line.”
