After DOE advisory, Meralco says rotational brownouts won’t push through anymore
(Eagle News) — The Department of Energy said that the Luzon grid is now “back to normal” as it lifted the earlier “red alert” and “yellow alert” notice effective 3:21 p.m. on Wednesday, June 2.
This was “due to a low system demand” and the “early entry” of Sual Unit 2 that was previously reported to have an unplanned outage since May 16. Because of this, the DOE advised that the red alert that would cause rotational brownouts is lifted.
After the announcement by the DOE, Meralco announced that “system is now back to normal.”
“All rotation brownouts listed after 3:21 pm will no longer push through,” Meralco said in an advisory late afternoon Wednesday, June 2.
The DOE announced at 4 p.m. Wednesday (June 2) that the “available capacity” of power had improved and the Luzon grid is back to normal.
“The available capacity has improved with a net increase of up to 265 MW with the early entry of Sual Unit 2 despite the untimely forced outage of Pagbilao Unit 2,” the DOE said in its website.
“Effective 3:21PM, the ‘RED ALERT’ and ‘YELLOW ALERT’ notice issued today has been lifted due to low system demand and synchronization of Sual Unit 2,” the DOE advisory said.
-Sual Power Plant unit 2 again operational –
The DOE said that the Sual Coal-fired Power Plant Unit 2, which has an output of 647 megawatts, “has synchronized to the grid at 2:21PM today.”
It said that the Pagbilao Coal-Fired Power Plant Unit 2 – with an output of 382 MW – is “currently on forced outage as of 12:12PM today (Wednesday, June 2) due to boiler waterwall tube leak.”
“The DOE is now coordinating with the power plant regarding the status of restoration, whose target date of operation is June 6, 2021,” the energy department said.
-Power supply now greater than demand-
Because of the developments with the early entry back to the grid of Sual unit 2 and the low system demand, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines “projected a total available capacity of 10,746 MW, relative to the projected peak demand of 10,505 MW as of 1:00PM today.”
This means that the projected total power supply available is higher than the projected peak demand. The total planned outage for Wednesday is 435 MW, while the total “unplaned” or forced outage because of a “boiler tube leak” in at least three power plants, among others, is 1,314 MW. Meanwhile, the total major derating – or reduction of power output – is 484 MW mainly due the the Malampaya gas restrictions, reducing its power output from 835 MW the previous week to 716 this week.
“In order to address the high system demand in the Luzon grid, MERALCO called out its interruptible load program (ILP) participants to voluntarily deload from the grid during the red alert. As of 10:30AM, committed capacity is at 241.57 MW from 104 participating accounts,” the DOE said.
Before this, the NGCP projected that the red alert could last until Monday, June 7.
(Eagle News Service)