ERC warns of 4-hour rotating blackouts in Mindanao, if...

ILOILO CITY, Philippines – Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla yesterday warned of three- to four-hour rotating blackouts in Mindanao if the 210-megawatt coal-fired power plant of Steag State Power Inc. will remain offline in summer when demand is higher.

“The average now is three hours. If the water level goes down in the summer, it could be an additional one hour (outage),” Petilla told reporters on the sidelines of the groundbreaking ceremony of the 150-megawatt plant expansion of Panay Energy Development Corp. of the Global Power Group. 

Petilla was referring to the inability of the hydropower plants to supply more power when the water level is lower as is usually the case during the summer months.

Petilla, however, said that even without the Steag’s damage, supply in the summer months is really expected to be tight, which is why the Department of Energy (DOE) had long been urging electric cooperatives to put power generators to augment supply.

Steag said the restoration of its 210-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Misamis Oriental is estimated to take two to three months following the Feb. 27 power outage that gripped the entire Mindanao.

“The indicative duration for the restoration of the units is estimated from eight to 12 weeks based on the initial findings of the ongoing technical evaluation,” Steag has said in an advisory.

Both units went offline after sustaining damage to its turbine-generators at the height of the reported Mindanao-wide grid systems disturbance on Feb. 27. Each unit has a net generating capacity of 105 MW.

In its advisory, Steag plant manager Carsten Evers said the company has intensified its efforts to get the units back on line, noting the precarious and volatile power supply condition in Mindanao.

Steag’s power plant is currently Mindanao’s biggest in terms of unit capacity, accounting for nearly a fifth of the island’s total electricity supply.

At 3:53 a.m. on Feb. 27, power outage gripped Mindanao, a region of 25 million people, stemming from the tripping of the Agus 1 hydroelectric power plant in Marawi City.

This developed as the power monitoring body Mindanao Power Monitoring Committee (MPMC) recommended steps to address the power situation in Mindanao.

In a meeting last Friday to assess the situation in Mindanao, the MPMC urged the immediate dispatch of power capacities including those from embedded generators of distribution utilities.

“We find it viable to quickly resolve the supply deficit by tapping what is already available in the system, as measures are being exerted to restore affected power plants back online,” said Luwalhati Antonino, chair of the Mindanao Development Authority, which also heads the monitoring body.

Toward this end, MPMC had asked private distribution utilities to run their embedded capacities such as diesel generators, even as it requested the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to judiciously accelerate provisional approval of pending rate applications for modular generator sets that have already been installed.

The power monitoring body also urged large commercial establishments and industries to implement demand-side management measures such as adjustment of operating schedules for processing and manufacturing plants, as well as the use of the so-called Interruptible Load Program, where large establishments such as malls and factories run their generator sets instead of tapping from the grid and are allowed to recover cost.

Local officials, for their part, have made efforts to address the power crisis in their localities.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talio-Mendoza has listed among its development goals for 2014 the construction of a hydroelectric plant, and a geothermal power facility in the hinterland town of Magpet, located at the foot of Mt. Apo.

Mendoza commissioned experts to tap the river that springs from a rainforest in Magpet, flowing down the lower valley of North Cotabato, which can be harnessed to generate electricity for local consumers. – With John Unson, Gerry Lee Gorit, Ben Serrano