By Juzel L. Danganan
MANILA, Sept. 9 (PNA) — After the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) issued a red alert status on Tuesday, the Luzon grid is expected to be stable for the week, said Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Jericho Petilla.
”Overall, we’re okay, because the demand is low. It will (continue to the rest of the week), we shouldn’t have a problem,” Petilla told reporters at the DOE head office in Bonifacio Global City, Makati.
His hope comes from the return of other power plants such as the 650 Megawatts (MW) Malaya Power Plant and the Sta. Rita Power Plant.
Moreover, he shared that power reserves are projected to be better, increasing to about 1,000 MW.
”We’ll be back probably to the level of at least a thousand, because we were hitting 1,400 and 1,500 MW, even if Sual was offline,” he said.
However, the 160 MW capacity of the Magat hydro-electric Power Plant and GNPower’s one unit was noted by Petilla as still unreliable power suppliers.
The Pantabangan Power Plant is also not contributing power to the grid, since it has undergone preparations for the summer months.
On the other hand, the Calaca Unit 2 was cited by the DOE chief as fully stable, as it has revived Monday after suffering a very short forced outage.
However, the DOE chief said that his biggest worry is the forecast supply, which sometimes can be turned inaccurate due to the untimely shutdown or the forced limited capacity of power plants.
”There’s nothing much you can do about it…, if you have a projected deficit, even if you release all the capacity,” he said.
Although some power plants went down Monday, the Energy secretary cited that the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) has alleviated the short power supply of Luzon, contributing 80 MW from a total run of three hours.
Meanwhile, Petilla said that soliciting for ILPs, in preparation for the reserve shortage on summer of 2015, will continue until next year. (PNA)