Mindanao seeks relief as power units go offline

With maintenance work on some of the major power plants set to start next month, the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) has taken steps to minimize the crippling impact of brownouts on the island.

According to Romeo Montenegro, investment and public affairs director of MinDA, the agency is coordinating with the Energy department for measures to address the power shortage in Mindanao.

MinDA aims to ease the situation by, among others, encouraging electricity cooperatives in the region to secure diesel-fed generator sets and tapping uncontracted capacities at the Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (Imem) in September.

Imem will be based in Cagayan de Oro City and launched in August. By September, it will be fully operational. This is based on the timeline set by the Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC), which operates the wholesale electricity spot market for Luzon and the Visayas.

STEAG State Power Inc., a German energy company, said in an advisory that it had shut down one of the units of its 210-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Mindanao last Friday for maintenance work that will last until Aug. 14. Another 105-MW unit at the Phividec Industrial Park in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental, will be shut down from Sept. 21 to Oct. 27.

The STEAG power plants are considered to be the biggest in Mindanao on a per unit capacity, accounting for a fifth of the island’s electric generation mix.

Another plant to be shut down in the third quarter is the 158-megawatt Agus 4 plant, which is part of the state-owned Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric power complex.

The onset of the rainy season is expected to ease the power situation in Mindanao, which is highly dependent on hydropower. But the maintenance shutdown of key energy facilities may lead to widespread power outages.

The Department of Energy expects the precarious situation to last until 2015, when new power plants are expected to go on stream.

MinDA earlier said the government’s P4.5-billion modular generator sets program should ease the power crunch on the island. With Executive Order No. 137, the government was able to pool the amount from its share in the Malampaya natural gas field.