Luzon agonizes with 3-hour brownouts
Over 1 M affected in Meralco franchise areas, including Metro Manila
Millions of Filipino consumers suffered from threehour rotational brownouts enforced in various areas
in Luzon, including Metro Manila, that persisted for 13 hours from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday.
As of mid-day on Friday, 1.38 million customers were already affected by brownouts in the franchise
area of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) alone; except for the customers of electric cooperatives who were equally affected with power interruptions after five power plants in the experienced forced outages.
Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi called for an “emergency meeting” with the generation companies (GenCos) and other relevant industry stakeholders on Thursday night, but as of this writing, no announcements were made yet as to the matters discussed in that gathering.
By 9 a.m., the country’s biggest power utility firm Meralco has already started implementing manual load dropping (MLD) or rolling brownouts in various areas until 10 p.m.
In Metro Manila, major cities and municipalities were affected by the rotational brownouts – widespread through Quezon City, Manila, Valenzuela, Caloocan, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Parañaque, Taguig, Pasay, Marikina, Pasig, Makati, and Mandaluyong.
Outside of Metro Manila, the provinces plunged into darkness were Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon – and the extremity of power interruptions was felt starting 12 noon, according to the advisory of Meralco.
According to Meralco Spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga, the other areas to experience electricity service interruptions are timed for announcements after every three hours – with the succeeding ones at the timeframes of 3 p.m.; 6 p.m. with the last duration at 9 p.m.
The Meralco executive explained that there had been no power supply available – and even their call for interruptible loads or for consumers with generating sets to switch on their facilities had already been fully exhausted.
System operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), in its advisory, expressly stated that the grid was already on “generation deficiency” or lack of supply and had “zero contingency reserve” because of the series of forced outages of power plants.
The same generating facilities were still on unplanned outages as of Friday: the 150-megawatt unit 2 of San Miguel Consolidated Power Corp. (SCPC) or Limay plant; 647MW unit 1 of the Sual coal-fired power facility also of the San Miguel group; 150MW unit 2 of South Luzon Power Generation Corp of the Consunji group; 420MW Pagbilao-3 plant of Aboitiz Power and TeaM Energy Philippines; and the 135MW South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp (SLTEC) of the Ayala group.
Power facilities on de-rated capacities or with un-optimized electricity generation include unit 2 of the Calaca coal-fired plant of the Consunji group; and unit 1 of the Malaya thermal facility of government-owned Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation.
Aside from the 13 hours of red alerts or brownout conditions in Luzon, NGCP also raised yellow alert for the rest of the day until 11:00 p.m. or close to midnight. Based on NGCP data, 1,502 megawatts had been out from the system due to forced outages of power plants; while additional 250MW had been due to capacity de-rating of the other plants.
NGCP’s forecast similarly indicated that peak demand on Friday (April 12) reached 10,334 megawatts; while available capacity just stood at 10,220MW – thus leaving an almost nil reserve of 114MW.
In the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), prices have been rising at 126 to 136 per kilowatt hour (kWh) starting at trading intervals of 9:00 a.m. onwards.