Lights back in Mindanao but power execs still in the dark

Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla. RYAN LEAGOGO/INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

Power was restored in Mindanao on Friday after a massive blackout left millions without electricity for hours, but officials warned of more outages due to aging equipment.

Mindanao, home to about 25 million people, regained power around 12 p.m., 32 hours after lights went out before dawn on Thursday, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla said.

The suspected cause of the region-wide blackout was equipment failure at a high-voltage switchyard that utility officials said is at least 26 years old.

“These are really old equipment, probably older than you,” Petilla told reporters at a news conference.

The breakdown triggered the automatic shutdown of a nearby government-owned hydropower plant that draws its power from a dam, and unleashed a cascading effect on other power plants across the region, utility officials said.

It was the first time in 12 years that the region had suffered a total outage, though partial outages had occurred in between, Petilla said.

Authorities are now investigating the breakdown, which meant the power plant nearest the original failure had to be temporarily shut down, he added.

Rolling outages

That closure is expected to further degrade the thin generating capacity reserves of the region, which has been grappling with chronic power shortages for years.

Petilla warned of daily rolling outages of up to three hours in the coming months when there is less rainfall to be collected at Mindanao’s government-owned hydroelectric dams.

In Davao City, members of a business group on Friday demanded an explanation for the eight-hour island-wide blackout which they said caused unquantified losses to the local economy.  The lack of explanation from government only heightened people’s uncertainty, the group added.

“Until today we don’t know the cause of the brownout,” Manuel “Bobby” Orig, Aboitiz Power’s first vice president for Mindanao Affairs, complained before Energy Undersecretary Raul Aguilos, who guested at the general membership meeting of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industries Inc.

Uncertainty

“We asked the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) and the (Department of Energy or DOE) and they have different answers,” Orig said. “We’d like to suggest that the DOE constitute a unit to find out the cause of the major breakdown and disclose it to the public … to address the immediate need to restore power, stop the uncertainty being felt by the people, and address the need (of) people to know.”

More than 24 hours after it occurred, the NGCP said it was still unable to determine the cause of the massive blackout. “NGCP is still determining the cause and will issue a statement when investigation is completed,” NGCP communications chief Cynthia Alabanza said.

“All NGCP substations connected to backbone lines in Mindanao were connected to the grid as of 12:18 p.m., Feb. 27,” Alabanza said in a text message to the Inquirer.

In a briefing, Petilla said that about 80 to 85 percent of power in the southern island is back online, except for the Steag State Power Inc. (SPI), Mindanao coal-fired power plant in the Phividec Industrial Estate in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental.

The NGCP, which operates the country’s transmission superhighway, has reported that SPI’s Mindanao coal plant was working normally before the system-wide disruption, but had problems getting back online after.

While the coal plant is down, two-hour rotating power outages can be expected in serviceable areas, according to Rolando Bacani, president of the state-run National Transmission Corp. (Transco).  Before the system-wide disruption, the island had one-hour rotating outages.

Collating reports

Petilla said the energy department and Transco are investigating the cause of the disruption and are now collating reports not only from Napocor and the NGCP but also from several power plants that stopped operating in what was termed a “cascading” system-wide disruption.

The management and operation of Transco’s nationwide transmission system has been privatized and turned over to NGCP since 2009 but the ownership of all transmission assets remains with Transco.

An electricity shortage last year forced the NGCP to ration supply in Mindanao that led to daily outages of up to 12 hours.

Asked if heads would roll, the energy secretary said the priority was to get optimal power back before gathering all needed information under a joint probe. “If there is really negligence, then yes. But first Transco and DOE will conduct an investigation,” Petilla said.

Separately and through an advisory, SPI said that Units 1 and 2 of the Mindanao coal plant went offline on Thursday dawn following a reported Mindanao systems disturbance. Initial reports indicated that the Pulangi and Agus hydroplants tripped and the coal plant followed.

Technical problems were detected in the turbine generators, and SPI said it would set a target date for the units’ restoration after technical assessment and evaluation had been completed.

“We have mobilized all our resources to restore the units back online,” said SPI president and CEO Dr. Bodo Goerlich.

SPI’s power plant is currently Mindanao’s most modern and biggest in terms of unit capacity. Principally owned by Steag GmbH, one the largest electricity producers in Germany, SPI is said to have delivered more than 10 billion kWh of electricity to the Mindanao grid since it started operations in November 2006, which represented about a fifth of the island’s total electricity supply.  With reports from Germelina Lacorte, Allan Nawal and Charlie Señase, Inquirer Mindanao; and AFP

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