MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Energy (DOE) placed Luzon on yellow alert from 10 am to 4 pm on Tuesday, July 19, following forced outages in two power plants.
"The DOE is closely monitoring the supply situation following the forced outage of the 122 megawatts (MW) of the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corporation's (SLTEC) coal-fired power plant and 300 MW-Block B of the Ilijan Natural Gas Power Plant resulting in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines' (NGCP) Yellow Alert declaration," the government agency said in a statement.
The NGCP issues a yellow alert when the contingency power reserve is less than the capacity of the largest synchronized unit of the grid which in Luzon, is the 647MW Sual power plant.
In addition to the outages, several power plants' units are also not generating at the moment: the Pagbilao unit 2 (382MW), Malaya 1 (300MW), Malaya 2 (350MW), and Angat Main 2 (50MW). Meanwhile, Calaca 1 is still running on a limited output of 180MW.
As a result, net reserve in the Luzon grid at 11 am and 2 pm today stood at 245MW and 64MW, respectively.
The DOE said that Luzon’s main power distributor, the Manila Electric Corporation (Meralco), has already coordinated with its Interruptible Load Program (ILP) participants to augment the supply.
It added that as of 11 am, there are about 154 ILP participants that have confirmed their availability, equivalent to 315MW. – Rappler.com