Manila Electric Company (MERALCO) logo.
PASIG CITY, Philippines — This week alone, reserves in the Luzon grid have fallen 3 times bringing it to a total of six times this year.
The reason: high demand and frequent forced outages of some power plants.
Under the circumstances, Meralco is seeing a higher electricity rate next month.
“The market, given this situation will be affected by plant outages. Historically, rates go up particulary in the spot market,” explained Joe Zaldarriaga, Meralco spokesperson.
Earlier, a yellow alert was raised in the Luzon grid beause of thin reserves.
The reason, the 300 megawatt gn power plant and 50 megawatt Angat hydro was on force outage along with the maintenance shutdown of 382 megawatt Pagbilao2, 300 megawatt Malaya1 and the 140 megawatt SLPGC1.
Earlier, the demand rose up to 9400 megawatts and it increased even more up to 9514 megawatts at around 2 p.m.
The reserve is estimated at 482 megawatts only at 11 a.m. and falls at 356 megawatts at 2 p.m.
“Right now, we are waiting advice from the National Grid on the cause of the outages were just acting on the instruction of the grid to prepare our ILP participants for possible activation,” said Larry Fernandez, Meralco’s Utilities and Economics head.
Meralco already adviced all the interruptible load program members to be prepared in case the supply collapses.
The energy department reminds all consumers to save energy by setting their airconditioning units temperature to 25 degrees.
Meanwhile, Meralco always prepares a schedule of rotational brownouts in case the situation worsens.
(MON JOCSON/UNTV NEWS)
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