Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Redentor Delola guaranteed that the country has “enough reserves” even if a number of power plants in Luzon are scheduled to go offline.
Pagbilao 1 (367.5 MW) is scheduled for shutdown from April 1 to 30, and Pagbilao 2 from June 6 to July 5. Ilijan (600 MW) stopped their operations this April and will resume early May. *
In total, the Luzon grid will lose over 1,600 MW of power generating capacity.
Despite this, data from the DOE, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), and Meralco assures that power supply reserves are enough to prevent yellow alerts and power outages.
Delola said that as long as the new power plants push through, there will be no power supply problems during the summer.
An additional 570 MW will come from incoming power plants such as Pagbilao Energy Corp.’s (PEC) 420-MW plant in Quezon and the 150-MW second unit of SMC Consolidated Power Corp.’s power plant in Limay, Bataan.
The state-owned Malaya thermal plant with 650 MW can also be used as an additional power source in case current supplies are insufficient.
However, Delola recognized the possibility of unexpected power plant shutdowns and delayed operations of the new power plants.
Over the years, unanticipated power plant failures led to power outages, and authorities admitted that such instances were unavoidable.
“We have supply na sakto lang for summer…Sa projection natin ngayon, we don’t expect brownout dahil walang supply or kulang ang supply,” Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said.
(“We have enough supply for summer. With our current projection, we are not expecting brownouts due to insufficient [energy] supplies,” Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said.)
*The originally published material reported that GN Power 1 will not be operational for a couple of weeks in June and July (Source). This article has been updated to reflect the correct information.
