Grid alerts expected to continue until plants return online by Aug.

THE National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said it expects to keep declaring grid alerts until August, based on the timetable for the restoration of the power plants that experienced forced outages.

“The situation in the Visayas is aggravated by the large power plants that are offline. While one out of four plants has returned online, that is not enough to ensure stability,” NGCP Assistant Vice-President Cynthia P. Alabanza said in a briefing on Monday.

Yellow alerts have been raised over the Visayas grid since May 12, with supply margins thinning due to the plant shutdowns.

On Monday, NGCP placed the Visayas grid under yellow alert from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., due to unavailability of large coal-fired  plants and high demand forecast for the region.

During the period, available supply stood at 2,581 megawatts (MW) against peak demand of 2,482 MW.

Yellow alerts are issued when the margin between power supply and demand thins below levels deemed safe. When demand exceeds supply, the status of the grid turns red, triggering rotational brownouts to ration power.

The Visayas grid was placed on yellow alert 33 times since the start of the year, and on red alert five times.

Asked about the impact of yellow alerts on transmission rates, Ms. Alabanza declined to speculate. “That’s best addressed by the IEMOP (Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines) and/or the DoE (Department of Energy) or the distribution utilities themselves,” she said.

This month, power consumers will be charged lower transmission rates due to the decline in the cost of power reserves and fees charged by NGCP.

Overall transmission rates declined 9.33% month on month to P1.4492 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in May.

Transmission wheeling rates decreased 6.99% month on month to P0.5607 per kWh. These reflect the cost of delivering electricity from power generators to the distribution system.

The price of ancillary services, or power reserves tapped by grid operators to support the transmission of power and to maintain reliable operations, dropped 10.73% month on month to P0.7220 per kWh.

The NGCP officially started operations as a power transmission service provider in 2009. — Sheldeen Joy Talavera