Philippines - MERALCO: Luzon Grid may need power capacity

Philippines - MERALCO: Luzon Grid may need power capacity

THE LUZON GRID MAY NEED MORE POWER CAPACITY FROM NEW GENERATION POWER PLANTS
FOLLOWING A SUDDEN SPIKE IN DEMAND IN THE MERALCO FRANCHISE AREA FOR THE
THIRD QUARTER.

Meralco expressed concern with the power situation in the grid with three
yellow alerts raised since August 30, company senior VP and utility
economics head Lawrence Fernandez said at the sides of a forum hosted by the
Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines.

"Our concern, while the situation hasn't reached red alert yet, is that when
power plants trip, it will trigger an automatic load dropping (ALD) which
means some of the customers lose electric service because of the tripping of
some power plants," Fernandez said.

Two of the yellow alerts, recorded on September 9 and 16, were weekends.

A yellow alert signifies that there were not enough reserves to cover the
largest running generating unit at the time but does not necessarily lead to
power outages.

Fernandez added that the yellow alerts were because of high demand –
especially for a weekend – and power plants that go on forced or unplanned
outage.

On Sept 8, the Sual 1 in Pangansinan, GN Power 1 and 2 in Mariveles, Bataan
and San Gabriel in Batangas.

These yellow alerts that occurred even when Meralco projected flat growth in
power demand for this year mean that new capacities must be embedded into
the Luzon Grid, Fernandez said.

"While more than 1,000 megawatts (MW) of power plants have commissioned in
the last year, the rise in demand is soaking up new capacity which means we
need more and more capacity to be built in the coming months,"

Earlier this year, Meralco saw a softer growth in sales coming following a
surge in sales volume last year due to the El Niño phenomenon and
election-related activities.

"We were not expecting the growth in demand that we experience this year
coming off from 2016 with the El Nino and election year," he said.

Fernandez said that electricity consumption grew almost four percent-to-date
despite having a robust growth of 8.1 percent in 2016.

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Link to Original Article:
http://powerphilippines.com/2017/09/21/meralco-records-sudden-demand/

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com




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