Yellow alert up in Luzon
Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 09:01:51 +0000
Even with the drop in electricity demand on Saturday, Luzon grid was placed on new round of 10-hour ‘yellow alert’ or scant power reserve condition because of the forced outage of the Limay plant in Bataan.
The Department of Energy (DOE) similarly reported that the San Gabriel plant of First Gen Corporation had been de-rated on its capacity generation to 210 megawatts from its installed capacity level of 420MW.
These twin hapless incidents in the power system prompted the declaration of fresh round of yellow alert by system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) – even if the demand had been anticipated to taper off during the weekend because most business offices as well as government entities are closed.
The yellow alert condition was raised for 10 hours – from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m .and then from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Early Saturday, NGCP’s forecast of peak demand had been placed at 9,735 megawatts vis-a-vis 10,277MW of availability capacity, and that consequently left a very thin reserve of 158MW; and by mid-day, demand was anticipated to peak at 9,463 megawatts versus available capacity of 10,063MW- thus, reserve was still strained at just the level of 223MW. Evening forecast was bracing for the worst as reserve level was just seen at 20MW, with peak demand climbing to 9,913MW against the available capacity of 10,326MW.
The same plants on forced outages in the past two weeks were still on the list – except for the 135MW unit 1 of the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp (SLTEC) of the Ayala group which has already been synchronized back to the grid on Saturday morning.
For the First Gen plant, DOE emphasized that “the restriction will only take effect over the weekend to give way to the necessary line pack recovery in preparation for the weekend demand.”
It was further noted that the company’s other plant – the 1,000MW Santa Rita gas-fired facility “will be operating on liquid fuel to ensure that all units of the Santa Rita, San Lorenzo and San Gabriel plants will be able to run on their maximum outputs,” according to the energy department. (Myrna Velasco)