The Department of Energy (DOE) yesterday warned of more possible red alerts this month but assured additional supply in Luzon will come in by June with the scheduled resumption of operations of the Ilijan natural gas-fired power plant before the end of May.
Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla, said in a briefing yesterday, there is no assurance last Monday’s power alerts and interruptions will no longer be experienced this month.
Flotilla said the extreme heat being experienced by the country is “not expected” and affects the performance of power plants to operate efficiently.
Based on DOE forecasts, the biggest power demand for the grid is expected to hit 13,125 MW sometime in the fourth week of May.
The DOE said Luzon grid’s peak demand for power last Monday reached as high as 12,418 megawatts (MW) which is the highest number for the year
Based on DOE’s power supply outlook for the Luzon grid as of the last week of April, the region will be under yellow alert for the entire month of May until the middle of June as well as in some weeks of August, September, October and November.
The DOE said initial volume out of the total 1,200 MW capacity that can be provided by Ilijan natural-gas fired power plant can be available by May 26. The DOE added this could be enough to improve Luzon’s power outlook in the coming months.
Apart from the phased return of the Ilijan power plant, the DOE said the expected completion of the full capacity of Mindanao-Visayas interconnection by August will also help stabilize power supply in the region.
DOE said eight power plant projects operating on coal, hydro, diesel and biomass with a total of 360.43 MW are scheduled to start commercial operation from this month until December.
Despite expected additional capacities, DOE is bent on discovering the root cause of Monday’s power supply issues which the agency said was caused by a tripping in the transmission line of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) which then caused the tripping of the Masinloc coal-fired power plant.
“The initial explanation they (NGCP) had, (is that) there was heavy rains and lightning in that area and their transmission line was hit. We’re still waiting for the final report…,” said DOE undersecretary Rowena Guevara.
NGCP said its initial investigation on the sequence of events that led to the red alert in Luzon grid on Monday shows its Bolo-Masinloc 230 kilovolt (kV) line 2 tripped.
“This line is N-1, or operates with a redundancy. The load carried by line 2 was automatically transferred to line 1 when the former tripped. Each of lines 1 or 2 is more than capable to singularly carry the entire loading of the Bolo-Masinloc 230kV facility at any time,” the company said.
NGCP added thereafter, 2 of 3 Masinloc Units for a total of 630 MW tripped and together with other units already on forced outage, caused 1,354MW of power lost to the Luzon grid.
“Given the N-1 contingency in place at NGCP’s Bolo-Masinloc Line and the automatic transfer of loads from line 2 to line 1, the tripping of two Masinloc units was both unexpected and undesirable,” NGCP said.
The system operator added the Bolo-Masinloc line 2 was immediately restored within 19 minutes and as of yesterday, unit 1 of Masinloc was successfully and fully reintegrated to the grid and unit 2 was integrated but at a derated capacity.
