Simultaneous technical trouble and forced outages at three of the country's major coal plants have plunged anew the Luzon grid into debilitating two to three hours of rotating brownouts for the next five days.

The brownouts, happening for the second time since the start of the year, have been causing not only extreme inconvenience to the public but also resulting in opportunity losses for businesses.

System operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) announced that one unit of the Sual plant of 600-megawatt capacity and another one unit of 300-MW capacity of the Masinloc plant have been on forced outages due to technical failure since Sunday night.

NGCP Spokesperson Carlito Clauido also apprised media that about 200-MW load from the 600-MW Calaca coal-fired plant was lost from the system since the facility's shutdown last February 26.

“All in all, the capacity reduction we are expecting would be about 1,162 megawatts. It will take several days before these technical troubles in the plant could be fixed,” Claudio said.

The NGCP and utility firm Manila Electric Company (Meralco) said the rotating brownouts started at 10 a.m. Monday, and this will be a rolling occurrence in all areas in Metro Manila and major provinces in Luzon for several days.

NGCP President Walter Brown told a hearing of the House Committee on Energy that based on ground reports from the plant operators, the earliest timeframe the plants can be brought back to the grid “will be five days”.

A situationer report sent by NGCP to the media indicated that the generation deficiency for Luzon grid on Monday was at 478 megawatts; hence, brownouts are expected to last longer compared to the January 25 incident.

“Outages lasting two to three hours will be experienced by Luzon grid's load customers,” the system operator warned.

It then advised Metro Manila and Luzon customers “to coordinate directly with their respective distribution utilities and electric cooperatives for information on the power interruption schedule and list of specific areas which will experience temporary power outage.”

Meralco, for its part, noted that it was prompted to undertake load shedding because of lack of power from suppliers. Affected areas in its franchise area, it said, will experience two hours of power interruptions.

As of 4 p.m. Monday, Meralco advised that the affected areas included large parts of Makati, Malabon, Mandaluyong, Manila, and Marikina in Metro Manila; while the worst hit areas in nearby provinces have been Laguna and Bulacan.

NGCP added that Luzon grid, which previously had all running power plants connected and synchronized to the grid, suddenly experienced reduced capacity because of the shutdown of the coal plants. Its generation deficiency is now 478 MW, said NGCP Spokesman Rosette Martinez.

Sual plant operator TeaM Energy advised that repair works are being undertaken double-time to ensure that the plant will be set back on stream “within the shortest time possible.”

“The sudden decrease in the available capacity when compared with previous days' figures is attributed to the shutdown of two major plants namely, Sual 1 (647 MW) operated by Team Energy Philippines and Masinloc 1 (315 MW) owned and operated by AES Corporation,” NGCP said.

As of March 1, NGCP also reported generation deficiency in Visayas at 47 MW; while Mindanao hit another all-time supply deficiency of 390 MW.

“Visayas grid has a generation deficiency of 45 MW. Salcon Power's Cebu Thermal Power Plant Unit 1 is operational and already loaded with 48 MW but Unit 2 with a rated capacity of 55 MW is under preventive maintenance shutdown. Estimated completion date of maintenance works is on March 7,” the grid operator said.

It added that Mindanao grid will continue “to experience generation deficiency … mainly due to limited available capacities from hydropower plants, most of which have water reservoirs that are drying up due to the El Niño.”

Long-term solution
With the recurring brownouts, Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) senatorial bet Jose “Joey” de Venecia Jr. said the country needs long-term solution on threatening power crisis, which described as something that does not need President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to have emergency powers.

De Venecia said that the government's failure to ensure adequate power supply throughout the country that prompted Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes to call for emergency powers in hopes to solve the problem was “inexcuseable.”

"It was sad that Sec. Reyes had been reduced to calling for emergency powers for Malacañang to work around his mismanagement of the energy portfolio,” De Venecia said.

“How can this blatant instance of fiscal mismanagement be glossed over by invoking emergency powers. Mr. Reyes must explain why he let the power situation in Mindanao worsen knowing the elections were coming,” he urged.

De Venecia said “there is something terribly fishy with how energy officials have allowed the problems in the power grid to fester in the Philippines’ election fraud central.”

An expert and pioneer of information technology in the country, he said there has been enough investor interest that could fund the needed power generation infrastructure "so that there would be enough energy resources for businesses and consumers alike.”

But Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri favored the granting by Congress of limited emergency powers to President Arroyo to resolve the power crisis now affecting Mindanao.

Zubiri said the emergency powers should be limited to resolving the power crisis in Mindanao only and not the whole country.

A native of Bukidnon in central Mindanao, Zubiri said residents in his province are up in arms against the current rotating brownouts in Bukidnon and other parts of Mindanao which last up to six hours daily. (With reports from Nonoy E. Lacson, Rio Rose Ribaya, and Mario Casayuran)