Luzon will have a tight power supply in the dry months next year, or the election period, amid increasing demand, depleting reserves from the Malampaya natural gas project in northwest Palawan and the inability of the plants to hold regular maintenance amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an industry executive said Wednesday.
“I think it’s going to be a very difficult summer. I think only one new power station has come into the energy mix in Luzon, up north, a 660-megawatts super critical coal power plant. Aside from that, there are no new power stations coming into the market,” Frank Thiel, managing director of Quezon Power (Philippines) Ltd. Co. and general manager of San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co., said during the virtual Asian Power Thermal Energy Conference.
QPPL operates a 440- MW coal-fired power plant, while SBPL owns a 500-MW coal-fired station in Mauban, Quezon. SBPL is the Philippines’ first supercritical coal-fired power plant that was switched on in October 2019.
“This can be a very tight situation. I think we will have barely enough provided all the plants are there at the same time, and we will don’t have any surprises,” Thiel said, in response to questions about supply forecast for 2022.
Thiel said that as demand continued to rise, some power plant projects were put on hold while others were not able to conduct most of their scheduled maintenance last year because of the pandemic.
“Pre-pandemic, we had a certain demand. During the pandemic, the demand dropped and I think a lot of projects were put on a lull because of that situation,” he said.
“In Luzon, the economy started taking off again. Demand has increased and was back to pre-pandemic levels and increasing. Next year is going to be very tough,” Thiel said.
Thiel said he was worried that several power plants were not able to have adequate maintenance procedures in the past two years because of the pandemic restrictions. Periodic maintenance allows power plants to operate reliably and avoid outages.
“We were not able to bring technical advisors. We rely on technical advisors to come in and help us for maintenance during the planned outages of the units,” he said.
“So, next year, we’re going to try and basically do three years’ worth of maintenance in one outage and hoping that everything will come together, and then we’ll be back and be available to the grid. So when people ask me, what’s my forecast about next year on power supply situation. I think it’s going to be very tight. I think it will be very challenging,” he said.
Thiel said power generators would do their best to get the plants back online quickly and safely.
“But the summer is going to be very challenging. We also have elections at that time. We’ve been given a directive by the government that we cannot take any shutdowns two months before and two months after the election period which presents a bit of a challenge as well,” he said.