Luzon power supply back to normal, DOE says

The Luzon grid is back to normal with adequate regulating and contingency reserves, the Department of Energy said on Tuesday.

After tripping out Tuesday afternoon, causing a 15-minute outage in parts of Metro Manila, the 1,200-megawatt Sual coal-fired power plant was back online by 7:24 last night and the yellow alert was lifted by 10:01 p.m. As such, the grid was seen to be in a “normal state,” the DOE said.

The DOE said it had received the latest report from National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), the system operator, that the power supply status was already back to “normal” as Sual Unit 2 accounting for about 647 MW was already back online at 7:24 p.m.

The Tiwi Geothermal Plant Unit 6 with a dependable capacity of 43 MW was also back in operation as of early Tuesday.

The government-owned Malaya power plant is now running, providing 330 MW of power augmenting the supply in Luzon.

Moreover, the DOE, in coordination with Meralco, has prepared the 826 MW enrolled capacities under the Interruptible Load Program, under which big-load customers may opt to run their generating facilities for their own use, to help augment the supply.

The DOE continues to monitor the developments of the 300-MW Calaca Unit 2 and the 119-MW TMO Units 5 and 6 that were on forced outage, while also ensuring that plants that were on planned maintenance shutdown would be on schedule to come on stream before the critical election period.

Magat Units 3 & 4 are expected to back on line later tonight.

The DOE called on the cooperation of the public to undertake energy efficiency and conservation initiatives despite normalization of power supply following the prolonged forced outages of some plants coinciding with other plants’ maintenance shutdown.