The country’s Department of Energy announced on Friday, July 11, that Metro Manila should brace for possible power outages on Saturday due to the shutdown of Ilijan Plant in Batangas.
The possible brownout of Metro Manila could happen between 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM on Saturday, July 12, 2014. The confirmation of the possible power interruptions was revealed by Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla in an interview with some of the country’s major news network.
According to the Department of Energy, the possible brownout is due to the scheduled maintenance of 1,200-MW Ilijan combined-cycle power plant in Batangas. The DOE added further that the Batangas plant needs inspection of their existing pipelines on Saturday and Sunday, July 13.
The power plant in Batangas is operated by Kepco Philippine Inc., it is considered as one of the country’s truly greenfield power plant. During the first year of the plants operation, the operating results are just in: over 96% availability and a miniscule of 0.48% forced outage rate.
Kepco was awarded by the National Power Corporation (NPC) a build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme to develop the Camago-Malampaya gas fields in the Province of Palawan to foster growth of the economy of Southern Luzon.
Meanwhile, the scheduled maintenance of the Ilijan Power Plant in Batangas is on top of the scheduled maintenance of other power plants in Southern Luzon. Department of Energy Secretar Jericho Petilla was quoted as saying “We have the equipments ready, so might as well do it as scheduled… we can’t risk resetting the ‘pigging’ (process) as there are other power plants that are scheduled for maintenance. Doing so might just aggravate our current energy situation,” Petilla said.
