An official of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) on Tuesday, Sept. 8, vowed continued coordination with other energy sector stakeholders to help address low capacity in the Visayas grid.
This comes as the Visayas grid continues to suffer from yellow and red alerts due to low supply that hinders it from meeting contingency requirements, consumer demand, and regulatory requirements.
As of Tuesday, the Visayas grid recorded 97 yellow and 34 red alerts since the start of the year, while the Mindanao grid recorded 13 yellow and four red alerts.
NGCP spokesperson lawyer Cynthia Alabanza said the Department of Energy (DOE) has tasked the transmission grid operator with tapping ancillary services, or battery facilities, to help boost capacity in the transmission grid.
She said the battery plants do not produce power per se, but store power normally sourced from solar-powered facilities during the day for use during peak periods.
Alabanza said the battery facilities NGCP will contract will help meet requirements at night.
“This is the short-term solution that NGCP can contribute to address the problem in the Visayas. But again, the caveat remains, we still need additional supply. So, first of all, those that became unavailable must return to operations and we should look for investors of new plants,” she said.
On Monday, Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said around 253 megawatts of battery energy storage system are targeted for Cebu, Panay, Negros and Leyte.
She said several power plants are scheduled to resume operations this month, both in the Visayas and Mindanao.
Specifically, Garin said Unit 1 of the Cebu Energy Development Corporation is already back last Sept. 5, while Unit 1 of the Therma Visayas Inc. is set to return to operations on Sept. 15 and Unit 3 of Panay Energy Development Corporation by Oct. 3.
For the Mindanao grid, Unit 2 of Therma South Inc. is set to resume operations by Sept. 8 and Unit 1 by Sept. 19, while Unit 2 of GNPower Kauswagan is scheduled to be back by Sept. 20.*PNA
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