The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) said it will verify the findings of an initial report submitted by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) as well as operators of power plants that went on unscheduled outages and deratings last Monday.
ERC said in a statement 58 percent of the capacity that went on outage was due to the tripping of NGCP’s Bolo-Nagsaag 500 kilovolt line last Sunday.
Citing the report, ERC said among the power plants that went down unplanned due to line tripping are the two units of the Sual coal-fired power plant with a capacity of 1,294 megawatts (MW) and two units of the Masinloc coal-fired power plant with a total of 679 MW capacity.
Other coal-fired power plants went down unscheduleddue to various equipment and technical issues and not because of the power line trip.
Among them are the 300 MW from Calaca due to generator high vibration refinement activities, 668 MW from Dinginin due to turbine vibration rectification and another 460 MW from Quezon Power due to primary air fan broken inlet vane linkage.
ERC said GNPower Mariveles coal-fired power plant experienced a 31 MW deration as its unit 2’s draft fan condition reached thermal overload while the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp. had a 5 MW deration because of unstable main steam pressure caused by poor coal quality.
The regulatory body said tamong the derated power plants for the period, unit 1 of the Masinloc coal-fired power plant is yet to explain why its output was slashed by 190 MW.
The ERC did not mention the timeline of its verification process as well as the possible penalties the involved parties may face.
Earlier, the Department of Energy said it will also conduct its own investigation but ruled out fuel supply constraint as the cause.
The agency is yet to issue any updates on its investigations.
NGCP said as of 1 p.m. yesterday, Luzon Grid was under normal operations with available capacity at 13,697 MW against a peak demand of 10,857 MW. – J. Macapagal
