ZAMBOANGA CITY — The residents of this city have been experiencing long hours of daily rotational brownout from a minimum of seven to a maximum of nine hours for the past few days already.
This came about as the Mindanao Grid is on red alert with zero reserve based on the system advisory of the National Power Corporation (Napocor) forwarded to the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco).
The advisory also said that one of the plants, the Agus 6 hydroelectric power plant, is only generating 30 megawatts (MW) due to water constraint.
The maximum power generation of Agus 6 hydroelectric power plant is 60-MW.
Engr. George Ledesma, Zamcelco general manager, said Thursday that the cooperative has a deficit of 37-MW since they are only receiving 48-MW brought about by the drop of Mindanao grid’s power generation.
Of the 48-MW, Ledes-ma said 17-MW is provided by Napocor while the remaining 31-MW comes from two Independent Power Producers (IPPs) namely Therma Marine, Inc. (TMI) and Mapalad Power Corporation (MPC), which provide 18-MW and 13-MW, respectively.
MPC, like TMI, is supposed to supply 18-MW to Zamcelco but it only supplies 13-MW at present since one of its unit is on 34-day planned outage effective July 20 to August 22 due to preventive maintenance activities.
To reduce the power deficit, Zamcelco is acquiring eight units of 2-MW modular generator sets.
Ledesma said the first batch of the modular generators is set to arrive next week. He said the generators sets will be installed and commissioned by the third week of August. (PNA)
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