Third Yellow Alert in a week!
March 9, 2019CitizenWatch Philippines expresses serious concern over the fragile state of the Luzon’s power supply situation.
Based on our monitoring initiative “Power Plant Watch, the 3rd Yellow Alert this week was raised in the Luzon Grid due to insufficient reserves brought about by high forecasted system demand (9,903 MW) and forced outage of Bacman 2 (59 MW).
The first yellow alert of the year happened on March 5 due to the unexpected shutdown and limited generation of some power plants, with peak demand at 9,491 MW against available capacity of 10,115 MW.
On, March 7, the NGCP likewise issued a Yellow Alert when the 316-MW GNPower plant unit 2 in Mariveles, Bataan experienced forced outage. The other generating facilities that were on unplanned shutdowns included the 150-MW Malaya thermal power plant; 300-MW Calaca coal-fired facility; 150-MW unit 2 of South Luzon Power Generation Corp; and the 150-MW Unit 1 South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp. Another generating facility that was on forced outage is the 150-MW unit 2. In total, 1,226 MW of power capacity had been taken out from the system.
A “Yellow Alert,” as defined by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), is a system condition when the total power reserves becomes less than the capacity of the largest plant online, which for the Luzon grid is 647 megawatts (MW).
With the insufficiency of power supply in the grid, we will become very vulnerable to power interruptions and outages. Considering that summer is just around the corner, it becomes apparent that more power generation is needed. Further, the Department of Energy must act swiftly in order to avert the damaging consequences.
Whenever there are power outages, we are hit with higher electricity prices, expensive disruptions in productivity and unnecessary discomforts that will directly be felt by every consumer.
With mid-term elections coming in May, the peak of the hot summer months, this is an urgent concern where government must act swiftly to avoid as this will directly direct affect millions of voters.