Power crisis starts to cripple Mindanao

BY LEN VELASCO, Reporter

Cagayan de Oro areas not yet included in power curtailment schedules

Mindanao power situation declared under red alert status – DOE Sec. Reyes

THE projected power shortage is starting to affect major regions in Mindanao with Southern and Central Mindanao areas as among the hardest hit.

Last week, the provinces of Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur and North Cotabato, and the three cities of Cotabato, Marawi  and Iligan cities have experienced up to three hours of daily brownouts while Zamboanga Peninsula had one hour outages every day.

Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes said Mindanao and Visayas regions are hardly hit by the looming power crisis due to systems failure of some vital power installations and the impending surge of El Niño phenomenon...READ MORE

“The Mindanao region is now on the red alert status, while the Luzon area, although it is also experiencing rotating brownouts, is still on the yellow alert status,” Reyes said on Friday.  

The Department of Energy is set to meet power utilities and generators in Visayas and Mindanao this week to plot action plans that will address the rotating brownouts in the two major islands.

“It is important for us to go and organize these meetings and to find viable solutions. Not only are we addressing these power issues because of the elections but because power is essential to development,” Reyes said.

But Reyes said he expected supply problem in Visayas to be addressed soon with the ongoing construction of three coal-fired power plants by the Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC).

He said CEDC has constructed three new 82 MW coal-fired power plants, the first of which will become online by March this year while the two remaining units, totalling 164 MWs, would be operational before the yearend.

Another measure in place for Cebu is the 200-MW KEPCO-Salcon power plant located in Naga City, Cebu. These power plants would augment the power supply in the Cebu-Negros-Panay (CNP) grid, Reyes said.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), the private operator of the country’s power transmission network, said these scenarios would probably last up to the end of April this year.

NGCP has started to implement the daily load curtailment since February 8 which is expected to continue throughout the month.

NGCP deputy assistant chief technical officer Carlito C. Claudio said this is mainly because of low water levels in Lake Lanao, where the Agus plants draw water from.

“Right now, there is a deficiency in generating capacity in Mindanao, so there are rotating brownouts,” Claudio said.

The expanded curtailment was prompted by the significant reduction in the outputs of Napocor’s (National Power Corp.) Agus and Pulangi hydroplants by 50 % and 75%, respectively, due to very low water inflow, he said.

In Davao City, the Davao Light and Power Co. has announced 30-minute rotating brownouts until the end of the month. The announcement came after NGCP implemented a 60-megawatt curtailment on the city, also starting February 8.

But customers in the downtown area of the city were not immediately affected due to the commissioning of the utility’s 57-MW standby plant in Bajada near the central business district.

However, Caga yan de Oro areas –considered as Mindanao’s industrial hub—are still spared from the latest NGCP’s power curtailment schedules with its 6.3 MW standby facility coming from Mindanao Energy System, Inc. (Minergy), an independent power producer of Cagayan Electric Power and Light Co. Inc. (Cepalco).

But NGCP assistant vice president for operations and maintenance Engr. Emmanuel Abellanosa said that in the next few days, widespread power shedding may become more inevitable with two diesel power barges shutting down in Nasipit, Agusan del Norte. 

“There will be forced outages due to system operations failure,” Abellanosa said during a forum on Mindanao Power Outlook held at the VIP Hotel in Cagayan de Oro last week.

Abellanosa urged electricity consumers here to be responsible and exercise ways to use electricity efficiently.

Abellanosa noted that while Minergy did came to the rescue of Cagayan de Oro during the Mindanao power crisis in the early 90s, what largely saved northern Mindanao at that time was the voluntary load curtailment (VLC) and peak shaving by big power consumers.

Cepalco, on the other hand, said they will be using their Minergy sources as their base-load starting this year.

“Our supply from existing sources will not be enough starting 2010,” said Cecilio Sumaoy, Cepalco’s systems operations manager.

In fact, Sumaoy said, Cepalco is looking for investors for its second solar park project in a 10-hectare land in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental to help stem the electricity crisis. If realized, this will become Cepalco’s  second solar photovoltaic power plant

Also during the forum, industry players and stakeholders allayed fears that the impending power crisis could cripple Mindanao’s economy since it would severely affect the business sector.

Cagayan de Oro Chamber of Industries (COCI) president Jerome Soldevilla said the daily brownouts have hampered business activities, especially industry-based sectors since power is a basic need to sustain business operations.

Soldevilla, who is also information officer of Steag State Power, Inc., an independent coal-fired power producer, said big industries within the region are bracing for the worst.

Earlier, Soldevilla said local industries are seeing positive growth this year after experiencing slump last year due to global financial crisis.

The COCI has called on for a collective action to address the impending power crisis.

It encourages stakeholders to map out short and long term solutions and strategies to ensure stable and reliable supply of power and pursue aggressively the promotions of investments in Mindanao’s power industry.

To address the problem, the forum has reiterated the call made by Mindanao Power Alliance during the Power Summit in December, to speed up repair of Agus 5, provide support to Iligan Diesel Power Plant (IDPP) to boost its generation, share extra load, conduct series of information and education fora, the conduct of Mindanao Power Investors’ Forum in August this year, and the enforcement of power load shifting and energy conservation program.

Meanwhile, electricity users in Luzon now face prospects of hours-long rotating power interruptions a day starting early next week due to critically low supply, power industry officials said.

NGCP’s Claudio said that the Luzon grid is set to be placed on “red alert” -- meaning that it has no power reserves -- from February 16-March 11 due to a projected supply shortfall of at least 500 megawatts (MW).

Lawrence S. Fernandez, utility economics manager of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), said that this, in turn, would result in rotating power interruptions.

“Yes, there will be brown-outs...possibly two- to three-hour rotating brownouts twice a day,” Mr. Fernandez said.

Power supply in the Luzon grid is expected to fall critically short by Feb. 16, as the 650-MW Malaya plant run by Korea Electric and Power Corp. runs out of fuel at roughly the same time that the 2,700-MW Malampaya deep-water gas-to-power facility will undergo preventive maintenance.

The Malaya plant was initially intended to offset the loss in capacity during the scheduled preventive maintenance of the Malampaya facility from Feb. 10-Mar. 11.

“But it [Malaya plant] was compelled to run in January due to the Sual and Limay shutdown that time. Malaya said [then] that it would run out of inventory already,” Mr. Claudio said.