Luzon hit by rotating brownouts

• 14 years ago (2010-01-25)
• David Flin

North America 1021

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The forced outage of the Sual coal-fired power in , triggered rotating brownouts of about seven hours that affected large areas in the grid. In a media advisory sent by the utility Manila Electric Company (Meralco), it cited “generation deficiency as the cause of the rolling outages. Meralco said that it resorted to manual load dropping starting 1.38pm local time on Monday 25 January: “Due to the generation insufficiency brought about by the outage of Sual unit 1 at 12.41pm ”.

Meralco said that the unit has a generation capacity of 540MW, but was at 350MW when it tripped. The outage was traced to a feed water pump trouble at the plant. An official statement from Meralco said: “The rotating brownouts are expected to last until 9pm due to the insufficiency in the power supply.”

Ramon Ang, President of San Miguel Corporation, said: “Team Energy rejected Philippine National Oil Company-Exploration Corporation’s (PNOC-EC) coal delivery to the plant earlier.” PNOC-EC had been contracted to supply coal for the plant.

Plant operator Team Energy explained that it rejected PNOC-EC’s coal shipment “because it was not according to specifications. We cannot use any coal because it will destroy the plant.”