THE Luzon grid was placed on “yellow alert” on Monday after six power plants conked out and three more experienced below-capacity generation.
The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) issued the yellow alert notice from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. A yellow alert means insufficient operating power reserve. As of Monday afternoon, the grid’s available capacity stood at 11,750 megawatts (MW) as against a peak demand of 10,437 MW.
The power plants that went on forced outage are Calaca 2 (300MW), GMEC 1 (316MW), Sta. Rita module 20 (256MW), Masinloc 3 (355MW), Sual 1 (657MW), SBPL (455MW). The derated plants are Masinloc 1 (250MW), Masinloc 2 (270MW), and Magat 1 (60MW).
The Department of Energy (DOE) said there was a total of 2,648 MW unavailable to the grid.
Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla assured the public that there is no fuel supply constraint after these power-generating plants went on forced outages.
“We assure the public that there appears to be no fuel constraints. Some of these generating plants are on forced outage caused by power plant tripping,” Lotilla said. “We anticipate that the Energy Regulatory Commission will also look into the root of this to prevent similar occurrence,” he added.
The DOE has coordinated with the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) to advise its Interruptible Load Program (ILP) participants to be prepared with their manual load dropping as a precautionary measure.
In this case, the ILP participants may run their facilities to allow more grid capacity to serve other customers.