The Philippine Independent Power Producers Association (PIPPA) is asking the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to suspend the implementation of plant outage rules and repeal the sanctions imposed on alleged violators.
PIPPA President Anne Montelibano said the group’s petition is pending with the commission, which promulgated the “Rules for the Interim Reliability Performance Indices and Equivalent Outage Days Per Year of Generating Units” in 2020.
These rules specify the planned and unplanned outage allowances in days per year. For instance, pulverized coal plants are allowed to have 27.9 days of planned outages and 16.8 days of unplanned outages while circulating fluidized bed (CFB) coal plants have 15.4 days of planned and 16.9 days of unplanned outages.
Combined cycle plants, as per ERC, are allowed to go on scheduled maintenance for 12.5 days and 7.7 days of unplanned shutdown while gas turbine plants are allowed 6.5 days of planned maintenance and 22.7 days of unscheduled outage.
For diesel plants, the ERC allowed five days of planned outage and 22 days for unplanned outage. Oil fired thermal plants have 30.8 days of planned and 27.8 days of unplanned.
For renewables, geothermal plants have six days of planned and 13.7 days of unplanned; hydroelectric with 23.1 days scheduled and 6.8 days of unscheduled; and biomass plants with 32.7 days planned and seven days unplanned.
Since the rules were issued, the ERC has found many power generators liable for having incurred unplanned outages more than the days allowed by the commission.
In 2021, the ERC probed 17 generation companies (gencos) that breached the maximum allowable unplanned outage. Of the 17 gencos, six were penalized. The ERC has also imposed a total of P15.5 million in penalty on erring gencos that were found to have breached the maximum allowable unplanned outage days for the year.
PIPPA argued the interim outage rules should only be recommendatory and that outages due to major maintenance and overhauls should not be counted against prescribed outage allowance.
“The prescribed unplanned outage allowance must be amended to reflect accurate data and likewise be renamed to forced outage,” PIPPA said. To reflect accurate data, PIPPA proposed that the allowable forced outage should be based on “the calculated mean and standard deviation from the forced outage data” of its member generators from 2014 to 2022.
PIPPA also said the scope of interim outage rules should be amended “to clearly exclude variable renewable energy, such as run-of-river.”
For non-compliant gencos, PIPPA suggested that they be provided a reasonable time to comply with the joint requirement of compliance and explanation.
PIPPA’s petition is for the ERC “to suspend the implementation of the Interim Reliability Performance Indices and Equivalent Outage Days Per Year of Generating Units until the resolution of this petition for rules change or at the very least, until end of 2023.”
It also asked the ERC “to adopt a revised interim reliability performance index with a clearer and more defined mandate.”
For gencos that allegedly violated the said rules, PIPPA wants the ERC “to rescind any previously issued show cause orders,” and “rescind any penalty imposed for violation of the interim rules until the ERC decides on this petition to initiate rule-making.”
The group proposed the following allowable forced outage days: 95.9 for pulverized coal, 61.5 for CFB, 47.93 for gas, 72.6 for diesel, 138.8 for geothermal, 29.3 for hydro, and 33.1 for pump-hydro storage.