by Claro A.
LanipaPAGADIAN CITY, Nov. 5 (PIA) – "The power curtailment problem or brown outs we are experiencing here in Mindanao since early this year, lies on the power generation sector," disclosed Zamboanga del Sur Electric Cooperative (ZAMSURECO I) General Manager Jose Raul Saniel.
“It means to say, the produced electricity here in Mindanao is not enough to supply the power requirements of all the distribution utilities or electric cooperatives,” Saniel was quoted as saying.
“The demand is high but the supply of electricity is decreasing,” added Saniel.
Saniel said there are several reasons behind this problem, and one of these reasons is that "one of the two coal-fired power plants in Misamis Oriental is now undergoing preventive maintenance shut-down. Each unit has the capacity of 105-megawatt, infact, it is one of the biggest power plants in Mindanao," Saniel informed.
"Based on the advisory we received, the preventive maintenance started in October 6, 2012 and is expected to finish by November 4, 2012. While the other unit will also be put to shut down on October 29 until November 10, 2012," Saniel announced.
"In addition to this, the Agus Power Plants of the National Power Corporation (NPC), such as the Agus 2 (unit 2) was forced outage since August of this year while Agus 5 (unit 2) has announced earlier that it has shut down til November 11 and that Agus 4 has a technical problem, as announced by the Department of Energy (DOE)," Saniel enumerated.
"The Pulangi Plants in Bukidnon which has the capacity of 255MW, but as of now is only producing 114 MW. There is really a huge decrease in the power supply,” accounted Saniel.
He said, "we have been receiving advisories and text messages from NGCP, almost every day for the past days that we are at the average of 450MW curtailment level in Mindanao. The deficiency level is very high,” he said.
"If these ongoing preventive maintenance will be over and some of the Agus Power Plants of NPC will be operational, hopefully we can already experience normal supply of electricity, meaning brown-out free," GM Saniel concluded. (JPA/CAL/PIA9)