Coal Plant No Quick Fix for Davao City's Power Voes

The new coal plant near here proved to be no quick fix to the lack of electricity that is plaguing this city and other places in Mindanao.

The city is again suffering from three-to-four hour brownouts daily blamed on two factors—the drought that is commonly associated with the El Niño phenomenon and maintenance work on a unit of a coal plant that had become one of the city’s main sources of power.

“The power shortage is really beyond our control,” said Ross Luga, assistant vice president for reputation enhancement of the Davao Light and Power Co. (DLPC), the city’s main supplier of power.

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“But we’re doing our best to minimize, if not to avoid, implementing these service disruptions,” said Luga at a press forum here Monday, apologizing to customers for the inconvenience.

The drought that has reduced the capacity of hydroelectric power sources was compounded by maintenance work on a unit of a coal plant under the Therma South Inc. (TSI), which is owned by the Aboitizes.

According to Luga, DLPC had been informed that Unit 2 of its sister company, the Aboitiz-owned TSI coal-fired power plant, will have to undergo maintenance work until Jan. 23, removing 50 megawatts of electricity from the Mindanao grid.

The previous week, DLPC started implementing rotating brownouts lasting for about an hour after the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (Psalm)-National Power Corporation (Napocor) failed to deliver the amount of electricity it was contracted to supply.

Luga said the power supply delivered to DLPC reached only 233 MW, not enough to meet the 320 MW demand.

He said power demand in Davao City can reach as high as 340 MW in peak hours.

Engineer Zandbro Chad Ramos, DLPC systems operations manager, said DLPC officials still don’t know the extent of the damage that El Niño has brought.

“If it gets worse, our brownouts might be a lot longer,” he said.

Luga said DLPC would be forced to project power demand and supply by the hour starting in February. “That’s how volatile our power situation has become,” he said.

“If all the generating capacities are working normally and the demand is not too high, there would have been no problem,” Luga said. Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao

Seven-hours Daily Blackouts in Zamboanga...

.... for, at least 45 days. Wow. Good, I am residing in Davao City. Bad for those in Zamboanga City... .

The Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco) has announced that this city will again experience at least seven hours rotational blackouts daily.

Zamcelco president Omar Sahi said, this is due to the maintenance shutdown of STEAG State Power, Inc. power plant in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental and Agus 2 in Lanao del Norte.

Sahi said the two power plants supply a total of 28 megawatt (MW) for Zamcelco. The ccoperative's daily peak demand is pegged at 87 MW.

The implementation of the rotational blackout (or brownout, as said in the Philippines) per feeder would be three hours in the morning, three in the afternoon and one hour in the evening.

Zamcelco has a total of 24 feeders serving a total of 114,504 member consumers.

Brownouts to Persist in Mindanao till 2016?

BAD NEWS FOR ALL OF US IN MINDANAO? This is written by PNA-Philippine News Agency...

 

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Electricity consumers in Mindanao would have to endure continued power outages until 2016, when the construction of new coal-fired power plants goes full steam, it was learned over the weekend.

The energy committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) reached this conclusion last week after reviewing the government’s responses to resolutions on tackling issues in the power and fuel sector that were submitted to President Aquino at the conclusion of the 2012 Philippine Business Conference.

Mindanao, except the cities of Davao and Cagayan de Oro, endures daily power shortages that result in brownouts.

Robert Calilim, chairman of the PCCI’s sub-committee on power, told representatives of the power sector in Mindanao, as well as some of the country’s biggest power companies, that a solution could be adopted if the government activates the hydroelectric generators in the area during peak hours.

In his presentation, Calilim, also a senior executive of the power-generation subsidiary of San Miguel Corp., boldly proposed making coal-fired geothermal and diesel plants the baseload electricity generators.

He said hydropower plants along the Agus and Polangi rivers in Bukidnon province should only be used during peak hours.

Calilim explained that the peak-hour requirements of Mindanao totals only 1,279 megawatts, much lower than the generating capacity of power-generating plants in the area that was initially computed at over 1,600 megawatts.

“The region has excess capacity of 400 megawatts. There should be no shortage there,” he said.

This approach to the brownout problem has not been taken, however, because of an existing policy that requires using the hydropower plants as baseload generators. This means the electricity these produce will be used first.

According to Calilim, this policy continues to be observed because the electricity produced by the dams is much cheaper than other energy sources.

A trade-off will be necessary, and consumers will have to pay about P1 more per kilowatt-hour with the diesel plants, including power barges deployed there once the power crisis starts to worsen.

Calilim assured, though, the sacrifice would be temporary. Once coal-fired plants are connected to the grid, these will replace diesel plants as baseload sources of power.

Brownouts return to Mindanao areas

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Brownouts return to Mindanao areas