BUTUAN CITY – The power outages in Mindanao have worsened due to the critical water level in the Lake Lanao and Pulangi River, the sources of the Mindanao grid, it was learned Monday.

It was also learned that the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) have forced hydroelectric power plants located at various areas in the southern island in Mindanao to reduce its power generation by at least 50% of their total capacity due to low water inflow from Lake Lanao and Pulangi River due to the onset of the dry spell.

In a press statement last Monday, the NGCP said the generating capacity is anticipated to remain insufficient with the unavailability of Agus 5 (Units 1 & 2), the Mindanao Coal Fired Power Plant (Unit 2), and the Iligan Diesel Power Plant.

It was also gathered that the Western Mindanao Power Corporation's power plant in Zamboanga City also decreased its output from 90 to 80 megawatts as of February 9, this year.

This pushed the NGCP, as system operator, to implement power load shedding throughout Mindanao. It will be enforced for the whole month of February as it projects that power supply will remain below comfortable levels.

Eugene Bicar, head of NGCP Mindanao-Systems Operations (SO), urged the execution of some measures to address the situation in the short term, like the completion of the Agus 5 Hydroelectric Plant (HEP) preventive maintenance and trash rack repair; resumption of the operation of Iligan Diesel Power Plant (IDPP) to be expedited by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM); and the National Power Corporation and the contracting of additional power generation if there's one available from embedded generations.

The NGCP Mindanao head also said the completion of the repair of the Agus 2, Kibawe 138 KV Lines 1 and 2, and the commissioning of Maramag, Bunawan 230 KV backbone project will also help strengthen the network interconnection of the Mindanao Grid.

It was recalled that NGCP informed electric cooperatives and consumers that starting February 3, they have been requesting power distributors to begin additional load-shedding at 10 a.m. instead of past 5 p.m. as compared to January, owing to further decrease in the generating capacity due to water inflow constraints.

Three curtailment levels are currently set, first for 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; second for 12:31 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., and third for 5:31 to 9 or 10 p.m. The levels increase to correspond with the continuous upward trend of the grid load between 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Curtailment is automatically lifted as actual system condition improves.

Power distributors each have their assigned load allocation to maintain for each time bracket under the curtailment plan. NGCP closely monitors the load of each distributor through the SCADA equipment of Area Control Centers (ACC) located in the cities of Butuan, Zamboanga, Cagayan de Oro, Davao and General Santos.

The head of NGCP Mindanao added that the cooperation of the distributors is vital to NGCP's efforts at maintaining the balance of the Mindanao power grid, especially during red alert state. The grid operator is bound by provisions of the Philippine Grid Code.