NGCP: Visayas power supply remains stable

Power supply in the Visayas remains stable despite the yellow alert status raised by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

Rosette Martinez, NGCP-Visayas Public Affairs head, yesterday said that the supply from the Luzon grid was able to cover the demand in the Visayas.

“We’re already on yellow alert, in reference to our power reserves in the Visayas. But that has been addressed because we are getting supply from Luzon,” she told Cebu Daily News in a phone interview.

The NGCP usually declares a yellow alert in the months leading to the summer season when demand for power increases due to the hot weather as well as the fact that more people are staying at home and using electricity with kids on vacation from school.

A yellow alert means the reserve level in the grid has gone below the required contingency reserve. The contingency reserve is equivalent to the capacity of the largest generating unit in the grid, which is 103 megawatts in the Visayas grid.

Aside from contingency reserves, the grid also needs a dispatchable reserve and a regulating reserve.

The Department of Energy (DOE), for its part, advised the public to also cut down on power usage.

While the yellow alert is expected, DOE Visayas field office head Saul Gonzales said the situation is not as worse as when more power plants would undergo preventive maintenance servicing (PMS).

So far, only the 246-megawatt (MW) Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC) coal-fired power plant in Toledo City is currently undergoing PMS.

He said the Visayas grid lost around 100 MW of power due to CEDC’s maintenance. The PMS is expected to last until the end of the month.

“So now, let us just conserve on our usage of power. If it is not needed, let’s just turn it off. At the same time, this will save us money also,” Gonzales advised.

No other facilities have signified or scheduled their own PMS so far, according to the DOE.

But he clarified that PMS activities are usually being done by power plants especially leading to the summer months, when demand is usually high. These activities include cleaning and lubrication of parts, among others.

This is also to ensure that when the demand is high, these power plants don’t experience any failure or problems.

According to Gonzales, the net reserves in the morning and noon are usually around 400 MW. However, this goes down to as low as 60 to 70 MW on evenings.

“We have been on yellow alert for a while now because our demand always increases because our economy also improves always. It is not very easy to put up power plants which could take up to three years,” Gonzales explained.

In its Power Situation Outlook for yesterday, March 14, the NGCP posted on its website that in the Visayas, system capacity or supply available was at 1,925 MW in the morning, 1,930 MW in the afternoon, and 1,765 MW in the evening.

On the other hand, system peak or the demand was at 1,828 MW in the morning, 1,818 megawatts in the afternoon, and 1,795 MW in the evening.

Based on yesterday’s records, there was a recorded -30 MW in the gross reserves for Visayas yesterday evening. Negative reserves usually force distribution utilities to implement rotational power interruptions to meet demands.

In the morning yesterday, gross reserves were at 97 MW in the morning and 111 MW in the afternoon.