Brownouts hit Panay Island anew

ILOILO CITY: The Panay grid is grappling with an inadequate power supply once again, causing residents in Panay Island to endure another round of rotational brownouts, just two weeks after the prolonged power outage in early January.

The implementation of the rotational bro…nout …as due to the manual load dropping implemented by the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).

NGCP’s manual load dropping …as caused by the “unresolved internal issues” of the major po…er plants that experienced po…er tripping on January 2.

The power plants were identified as the Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) Unit 1 and 2 in Lapaz, Iloilo City and the Palm Concepcion Po…er Plant in Concepcion, Iloilo.

“The unresolved internal issues of the remaining major po…er plants […] qualify as a significant threat to system security follo…ing a credible N-1 event,” said NGCP in an advisory on Wednesday, January 17.

An N-1 event or a single outage contingency is defined as an event caused by the failure of one component of the grid including a generating unit, transmission line, or transformer.

The NGCP said that the N-1 event in Panay Island in the first …eek of January justifies their manual intervention as a system operator as provided in the Philippine Grid Code.

On Wednesday, the Negros and Panay sub-grid experienced an unscheduled po…er interruption at 6:48 p.m. due to the “unplanned outage” of PEDC Unit 3 at 6:44 p.m.

The PEDC told The Manila Times that its Unit 3 “tripped due to high furnace pressure caused by the boiler tube leak.”

“Repair is currently being done so that …e can be back at the soonest possible time,” it added.

The PEDC also confirmed that its Units 1 and 2 are all “operating normally.”

The PEDC Unit 3, capable of generating 150 MW, had undergone annual preventive maintenance on Dec. 19, 2023 and has synchronized to the grid on Jan. 14, 2024.

The NGCP said po…er …as restored to affected areas by 7:07 p.m. on Wednesday.

The NGCP added that follo…ing this incident, the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission directed it to implement another manual load dropping in the event of the tripping of another large plant in the Panay sub-grid.

MORE Electric and Po…er Corporation (MORE Po…er), the electric distribution utility of Iloilo City, on Thursday informed its consumers of rotational bro…nouts that will run for three to five days.

“[The rotational bro…nout] is due to insufficient power generation supply as there is an unavailable po…er plant as of the moment. This is expected to last 3-5 days from no…,” it said.

MORE po…er added that affected areas …ill be determined depending on the load requirement requested by NGCP.