First Gen power plants back online

First Gen Corp. has brought online all of its power-generating facilities that needed to shut down following an earthquake swarm that hit Batangas earlier this month.

The company yesterday told the Philippine Stock Exchange it had resumed operations in San Lorenzo Switchyard which connects First Gen’s three natural gas-fired power plants to the transmission lines of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.
These facilities are the 500-megawatt San Lorenzo, 414-MW San Gabriel and 97-MW Avion power plants—all of which are now online and providing supply to the grid.

“We exerted all efforts to enable (the three facilities) to export their outputs at the quickest time,” First Gen vice president Jerome Cainglet said in a statement.
“Our site management team and our contractors have worked tirelessly since last week including through the Holy Week break,” Cainglet said.

Earlier, First Gen reported that the 1000-MW Santa Rita power plant tripped following the earthquakes, but did not suffer any significant damage and had since resumed operations.

Also, preliminary inspections indicated that the San Lorenzo, San Gabriel and Avion power plants “sustained no damage that can prevent these plants from operating.”

But the earthquakes, caused damage to various components of the San Lorenzo Switchyard, which connects the San Lorenzo, San Gabriel and Avion power plants to the grid. —RONNEL W. DOMINGO