Philippines: Visayas grid on alert – regulator scraps size cap for power plants
With two large coal plants offline, the grid operator again warns of tight supply. The energy regulator now allows bigger generating units to bring more power onto the grid.
Symbolic image · Photo: Patrickroque01 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
In the Philippines, the power grid of the Visayas island group was placed on yellow alert on Thursday for the first time in more than two weeks. The cause was the unavailability of two large coal plants and limited power imports from Mindanao, grid operator National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said. A total of 645.6 megawatts was unavailable. Available capacity of 2,557 megawatts faced peak demand of 2,479 megawatts between 5 and 6 p.m.
A yellow alert means supply still meets demand, but another plant breakdown could cause brownouts. On the same day, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) issued a resolution lifting the previous caps on the size of individual generating units: 600 megawatts on the main island of Luzon and 150 megawatts in the Visayas and Mindanao. Energy companies can now build bigger plants based on demand, technological advances and grid capacity.
Removing the outdated restrictions opens "opportunities for greater investments and additional power supply", said ERC chair Francis Saturnino Juan. New projects will still need a system impact study by the NGCP or accredited providers, which may also identify necessary upgrades such as transmission lines, transformers or substations. "Our priority is not simply to add bigger generating plants," Juan said. Officials said building new power plants would take several years.