No fuel supply constraints, DoE assures
The Department of Energy assured that the country has no fuel supply constraints even if several power plants went on forced outages on Monday that significantly slashed power supply in the main grid by 2,648 megawatts.
The plants’ unscheduled disconnection from the main grid prompted the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, the country’s lone transmission operator, to raise red and yellow alerts in Luzon.
“We assure the public that there appear to be no fuel constraints. Some of these generating plants are on forced outage caused by power plant tripping,” Energy Secretary Raphael Perpetuo Lotilla said in a press statement.
Likewise, he said the Energy Regulatory Commission is also expected to “look into the root of this to prevent a similar occurrence.”
In a morning advisory, the NGCP raised a red alert in Luzon from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and yellow alerts from 10 a.m.to 5 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m..
By 11:30 a.m., however, the NGCP lifted the red alert but the yellow alerts stayed from 3 to 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
A yellow alert is raised when the power reserve falls below the ideal levels. On the other hand, when a supply-demand balance worsens, a red alert, which points to severe power deficiency that may lead to rotating power interruptions, is declared.
Yesterday, six power plants went on forced outages while three others ran on derated capacities.
The power plants on forced outages were the Calaca 2, GNPower Mariveles 1, Sual 1, and Sta. Rita Module 20, Masinloc 3, and San Buenaventura Power Plant. Those running on derated capacities are Masinloc 1, Masinloc 2, and Magat.
Sual 1 and Masinloc 3, however, went back online at 10:19 a.m. and 11:19 a.m. respectively.
Relatedly, the DoE also said it coordinated with the Manila Electric Co. to advise its Interruptible Load Program participants to be prepared with their manual load dropping as a precautionary measure.
The ILP participants may run their facilities to allow more grid cap.
For its part, Meralco said it monitored the situation and measures were in place in case it would need to implement manual load dropping or rotating power interruptions if instructed by NGCP to manage the system.