Four major power plants went 0n forced outages shaving 1,458 megawatts (MW), triggering a Yellow Alert in the Luzon Grid, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines and the Department of Energy announced on Tuesday morning.
The latest and the largest of the plants forced to go offline is the 460MW Quezon Power Philippines Ltd. Co’s (QPPL) coal-fired power plant in Mauban town, which bogged down on Tuesday due to a tube leak in its economizer, which reduces the plant’s own energy consumption.
Another plant in Quezon, the 382MW Unit 1 of Team Energy’s Pagbilao coal plant, also suddenly halted operations on Saturday, though no specific reason was given.
Pagbilao Unit 2 is expected to back online on Thursday, while QPPL’s plant aims to return to operations by Friday.
Meanwhile, the 316MW Unit 1 of Aboitiz Power Corporation’s GNPower Mariveles plant in Bataan (photo above) and the 300MW Unit 2 of Sem-Calaca Power Corporation’s (SCPC) facility in Batangas are both expected to be back online in August. GNPower Mariveles Unit 1 was forced to go offline in February due to a boiler tube leak, while SCPC Unit 2 has not been operational since December 2020 due to an earth fault in its generator stator.
With an additional 213MW in unplanned outages coming from other plans, the grid has lost a total of 1,671MW to forced outages.
Capacities of two major plants have also been derated, namely Unit 2 of San Miguel Corporation’s (SMC) Masinloc coal plant in Zambales and Unit 2 of Team Energy and SMC’s Sual facility in Pangasinan.
Masinloc Unit 2’s capacity was downgraded by over half or 194MW from 344MW to just 150MW with only one boiler feed pump working. Sual Unit 2, meanwhile, now generates only 590MW, or 57MW less than its 647MW installed capacity, as its steam gland is under observation.
With an additional 1,324MW derated from other smaller plants, the grid has lost a total of 1,575MW from reduced capacities.
Planned maintenance outages, meanwhile, account for 1,042MW, with the 600MW Block A of the Ilijan gas-fired power plant comprising the biggest chunk. Pagbilao’s 382MW Unit 1 and Panasia Energy Inc.’s 80MW combined-cycle gas plant in Limay, Bataan are also on planned outage.
Pagbilao Unit 1 is scheduled to go back online on Friday, while Ilijan Block A and the Panasia facility are set to resume operations in August.
The outages and derating have shaved a total of 4,288MW has been shaved from the grid.
