Malampaya checkup seen to cause power rate hike
Malampaya natural gas platform off northwest Palawan (File photo by EDWIN BACASMAS / Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — Luzon is assured of a stable power supply even if the Malampaya gas facility is shut down for maintenance in February, the Department of Energy (DOE) said.
Energy officials, in a virtual briefing held on Friday, said they were exerting all efforts to ensure “the continuous supply of power” in the country’s largest island even if Malampaya, which supplies about 20 percent of the country’s electricity requirement, will be offline for 15 days.
Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said the outage could lead to higher rates, but he did not provide any estimates since they may change because of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The gas platform’s regular maintenance is scheduled from Feb. 4 to 18, 2023, Lotilla announced.
“This is a regular maintenance activity that has been closely coordinated with the DOE and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that the Malampaya facilities and equipment operate in a safe, reliable, and efficient manner to avoid incidents that can potentially impact the continuous supply of gas to the customer power plants,” the DOE said in a statement read by Lotilla.
Nonmovable schedule
Located off Palawan island, the gas-to-power project supplies natural gas to power plants in Luzon with a combined capacity of 3,200 megawatts (MW).Despite the cost implication, Energy Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara said the schedule of the Malampaya gas facility’s regular upkeep was “nonmovable” since it had been pushed back before and delaying it further would cause supply problems in the near future.
Malampaya’s regular checkup was originally slated in October this year. It was rescheduled for the first quarter of 2023 to avoid the 2022 typhoon season.
Nonetheless, Guevara said the Luzon grid has a “generation margin,” or supply surplus, meaning no yellow alerts will be observed throughout Malampaya’s planned outage.
“We had a conversation with the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) yesterday and we [can] see that there is a generation margin in February so we are not worried about this part. But we’re more worried in summer, starting April up to July,” Guevara said.
The DOE said it was coordinating with concerned parties to implement the contingency measures, such as designating “must run” plants, or those plants that were required to supply electricity, under all conditions.
It is coordinating with Manila Electric Co., other distribution utilities, and retail power suppliers for activation of interruptible load program plans, where their customers operate their own generator sets.
Other measures include hastening NGCP’s completion of transmission lines in the Luzon grid and implementing a day-ahead (6 p.m.) announcement of red and yellow alerts.
