Luzon grid on alert again over coal plant outages

MANILA, Philippines — The Luzon grid was placed on yellow alert again yesterday as several coal-fired power plants remain on forced outage.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) raised the alert from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 12:01 p.m. to 4 p.m. yesterday.

A yellow alert means power reserves are not enough to cover the largest running generating unit at the time but does not necessarily lead to power outages.

The grid operator said the net operating margin declined to 369 megawatts while supply dropped to 12,008 MW, with an estimated demand of 11,274 MW.

The 460-MW coal plant of Quezon Power Limited Co., 150-MW Unit 1, 50-MW Unit 3 and 50-MW Unit 4 of Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp., 316-MW Units 1 and 2 of GNPower Mariveles Energy Center Ltd. Co. and 300-MW Unit 2 of SEM-CalacaPower Corp. were still down yesterday.

With the shutdown, the Luzon grid had unplanned unavailable energy of 1,592 MW.

Climate and energy policy group Institute of Climate and Sustainable Cities energy transition adviser Alberto Dalusung III said the yellow alerts show the underlying problem of recurring centralized generator shutdowns in the grid.

He said high power generating costs, interruptions and alert levels raised highlight the vulnerability of the Luzon grid to large centralized generators.

“Any problem with these centralized generators can push the entire power system into a costly and vulnerable state because of the significant share of each individual centralized plant in the system,” Dalusung said.

He said there is an urgent need for an energy transition based on flexible and distributed energy sources.