No blackouts despite Ilijan plant shutdown

MANILA, Philippines - The 1,200-megawatt Ilijan natural gas power plant in Batangas went on both forced shutdown and maintenance outage since Jan. 12 but Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said low demand for power eased pressure on the grid, sparing consumers from blackouts.

“We did not go on yellow alert because of low demand,” he said.

A red alert means there is severe power deficiency while a yellow alert means reserves are below the minimum level set by the regulator. Yellow alert is reached when the total reserve is less than the capacity of the largest plant on line. For the Luzon grid, this is usually equivalent to 647 MW, or one unit of the Sual power plant.

“The whole Ilijan is out but at different times. The latest outage was Block B with 600 MW which went on forced outage on Jan. 13 due to a condenser boil tube leak,” an industry source said.

The estimated time to energize the power plant is three to four days, said the source.

The Department of Energy said the plant is both on forced and scheduled outage.

“It is on maintenance outage from Jan. 12 to March 3 due to damaged compressor turbine last Dec. 23. The Ilijan Block B, meanwhile, is on forced outage since Jan. 13 due to condenser tube leak,” said Mylene Capongcol, assistant director of the Electric Power Industry Management Bureau.

 She said there is no estimated time of completion yet.

Despite Ilijan unable to provide power to the Luzon grid, data from the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) showed that the grid remains stable with a system capacity of 7,535 MW, a system peak demand of 6,184 MW or reserves of 1,351 MW.

Overall, however, the situation remains critical with several other power plants going on maintenance shutdown from January to July.

Several power plants with a total capacity of 4,162.6 MW will go on scheduled shutdowns but the exact amount of power that will disappear from the grid will vary every month, depending on the specific schedule each month.