MANILA, Philippines?The power outages in Metro Manila and Luzon will not affect the conduct of the automated elections on May 10, the Commission on Elections said Tuesday.

Comelec Chair Jose Melo assured the public that the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, the equipment that will be used to cast and count the votes, were capable of running even without an external power supply. A PCOS machine has its own battery.

Melo also noted that the machines were not expected to work until evening. ?At 6 p.m. its [voting, counting and canvassing are] completed and shortly after that [the results] transmitted,? he said.

The Comelec chair said there was no need to have another plan in case of blackouts since the voting, canvassing and counting would not last more than 11 hours?from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.

The PCOS machine can run up to 16 hours using its own batteries, he said. The canvassing centers will also have generator sets on standby in case of blackouts.

On Monday, Metro Manila and portions of Bulacan, Cavite and Laguna suffered rotating brownouts of two to three hours after the Sual power plant in Pangasinan malfunctioned.

Officials of the Sual power plant have assured the public that the plant?s operation will normalize by next month when the next shipment of coal to feed the plant arrives.

The plant still has a stock of 40,000 tons of coal that can last up to the second week of February, said Greggy Romualdez, external affairs head of Team Energy, the firm that runs the Sual power plant.

The 1,200-megawatt (MW) Sual coal-fired power plant is made up of two units. Sual 2 was shut down on Jan. 6 due to a shortage of coal supply.

Romualdez said the running unit, Sual 1, tripped on Monday due to a ?feed water pump trouble,? resulting in a blackout from 1:40 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Metro Manila and nearby areas.

Confluence of events

Romualdez said the Monday blackout was a result of a technical problem. ?There was just confluence of events, with power plants simultaneously down because of different reasons,? he said.

The Limay power plant in Bataan also shut down because of lack of coal, the Pagbilao power plant in Quezon was on preventive maintenance, and the Calaca power plant in Batangas was having trouble with its boiler, he said.

Team Energy, he said, was hoping that San Miguel Energy Corp., its coal supplier, would solve the supply problem so the Sual plant could operate at its peak capacity.

A power situation update from the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said Sual 1 produced an initial load of 225 MW at 6:30 p.m. on Monday.

?[It] is now running at 531 MW,? the update said.

Yellow alert

Despite the repair of the Sual power unit, NGCP has placed the Luzon grid on ?yellow alert? because of its low power reserve.

Carlito Claudio, NGCP vice president for systems operations, said the yellow alert meant that the Luzon grid was not meeting the required reserve level of 1,200 MW. The reserve is currently 201 MW.

The Luzon grid has been on yellow alert since Jan. 8, after the second unit of the Sual coal-power facility had shut down due to lack of coal, according to Claudio. The second unit has a generating capacity of 647 MW.

Contingency plan

Despite the machines? capability to run without external power source, the Department of Energy (DoE) and the National Power Corp. (Napocor) have submitted a contingency plan to the Comelec to address possible power failures during the election period.

Despite the critical power reserve in Luzon, Energy Secretary Angelo T. Reyes Tuesday assured the public that ?there will be no power interruption during the May 2010 elections.?

Fail-safe power supply

Reyes told reporters that the operators of power plants had scheduled their maintenance shutdowns earlier to avoid scheduling them during the elections.

The DoE has already presented its power contingency plan to the Comelec to ensure ?adequate and fail-safe? power supply during the May general elections.

State-run Napocor earlier said it would push through with its P9-billion power contingency plan, even as the Comelec had reportedly rejected its proposal.

Part of the two-year contingency plan was to provide back-up measures particularly during the elections to ensure adequate power supply.

?We don?t need the Comelec nod for the contingency plan. We just presented it so we are properly coordinated,? said Napocor president Froilan A. Tampinco.

Part of the outlay of about P9 billion, or P3 billion higher than earlier estimates, would be for the provision of interim power supply arrangements, particularly during and after the elections, even before the capacities of the committed power projects come in.

Mobile plants

The plan will require several megawatts of mobile plants, which can be moved from one area to another to ensure that power supply problems can be immediately addressed.

Napocor also planned to tap a portion of the government?s P14-billion calamity fund to implement the two-year plan.

The militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) called on officials of the DoE, Napocor and NGCP to have back-up power during the elections.

In a statement, Bayan said the rotating brownouts, if they happen again, might have an effect on the conduct of the first ever automated polls.

?We hope the rotating Luzon brownouts (would not be) a preview of things to come,? Bayan added. With reports from Amy R. Remo and Alcuin Papa