Electricity crisis gripping the island gradually gets installment solutions as external power supply starts reaching the Bohol Backbone Transmission Project (BBTP) of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.
Bohol II Electric Cooperative (Boheco II) got the first flush of 9 megawatts of electricity from Leyte at the brink of the weekend.
Boheco II needs 21MW of electricity to meet the demand of its service areas which means it has to resort to power supply rationing as the supply is still less than half of the peak consumption.
NGCP Visayas Spokesperson Betty Martinez explained that geography is the factor why Boheco II got the supply first.
“It is because Boheco II area is nearest to NGCP’s substation in Ubay. In as much as the allocation for Bohol was still very minimal at the onset, extending the power to our Corella Substation and Tagbilaran Substation immediately would have resulted in voltage issue,” according to Martinez.
She assured that it would become “technically possible to extend power farther with the voltage at the mandated level (per Philippine Grid Code) as supply would increase”.
Boheco I also started receiving power supply from Leyte since the weekend through the Maasin-Ubay 138-kilovolt submarine cable.
In its advisory issued yesterday, Boheco I made it known that the supply from Leyte came added to the supply generated from its hydro-power plants in Bohol.
With this, Boheco I assured that power supply for its service areas “is nearly stable”.
“As of now, all municipalities within the coverage area of Boheco I are being served. However, power outages may still be experienced due to limited supply of electricity for now,” according to Boheco I.
Boheco I is set to join the meeting of concerned agencies this week “to address important matters relative to the electricity crisis in Bohol”.
As of now, all players in the power industry continue to work on the identified solutions “to fully restore the system back to normal operations”.
As of July 13, Boheco I still had to resort to electricity rationing to its consumers while it was still trying to “optimize distribution of power with all the limited supply available.
Boheco had started “working with concerned entities regarding the deployment of power barges in strategic areas of Bohol to augment the power supply in the whole province”.
Bohol currently has four dependable power generators- -the BDPP and Boheco’s three hydro-power plants in Hanopol that produces 4.8MW, Sevilla that produces 2.3MW, and Loboc hydro that produces 1.1MW.
The four power generation plants inside Bohol can produce a total of 20.2MW.
Bohol has current power demand 79MW, but will reach 83.5MW if the consumption of Alturas Group of Companies is included.
IMPROVING
“NGCP is pooling all its resources and exerting all efforts to restore, even partially, power transmission services” to meet the July 31 deadline set by the Department of Energy.
NGCP is employing a parallel, simultaneous strategy of repair, replacement, and reconfiguration for its affected transmission equipment, and
As of 11:45 p.m. on July 13, NGCP already energized the Ormoc-Babatngon 138kV line.
NGCP had also energized the Babatngon-Abucay-Palo 69kV at 12:04 a.m. on July 14 and the Ormoc-Maasin 138kV line at 12:37 a.m. on the same day, enabling it to supply power to the island of Leyte.
As of 3 p.m. on July 14, the grid started receiving 56MW from Cebu and Energy Development Corporation’s power plants.
The 56MW is being distributed to three areas- -36MW for Leyte and Southern Leyte, 14MW for Samar and Eastern Samar, and 6MW for Bohol.
NGCP explained that “power services in the affected areas are still subject to availability of supply, and the whole Visayas Grid may experience rotating power interruptions until power supply stabilizes”.
“NGCP will also replace the damaged transformers in Ormoc Substation with transformers from Compostela, Cebu and expects to complete the replacement on July 31,” NGCP indicated in its July 14 advisory.
NGCP still continues to work on the simultaneous repair and replacement of damaged facilities in order to permanently restore power transmission services in the affected provinces.
This is on top of the energization of its lines and partial restoration of power.
“NGCP successfully energized the Ormoc-Kananga 230kV Line 2 at 8:17 p.m. on July 12”, and has now beenproviding feedback power to EDC’s Upper Mahiao and Malitbog geothermal power plants in Northern Leyte as of July 13.
By Thursday last week, “re-testing of the 150MVA Transformer No. 6 in Ormoc Substation was completed and replacement of the damaged bushing is already on-going. NGCP is continuously trying to energize the damaged transformer. Other transformers at Ormoc Substation are also undergoing testing for leakage reactance”.
Also on the same day, NGCP announced that it had already “commenced the transfer of 150 and 100 MVA transformers from Compostela Substation in Cebu to Ormoc Substation to replace the damaged transformers in the facility”.
“Reconfiguration of the Compostela-Daanbantayan-Tabang o-Ormoc 230kV line to be energized at 138kV started at4:00 p.m. on July 12,” according to NGCP.
It assured to be able to deliver available power from Cebu to Ormoc “once the reconfiguration scheme is finalized”.
NGCP continues to assess the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) converter transformer in Ormoc, and erected an Emergency Restoration System (ERS) for the Ormoc-Isabel 138kV line.
HITCHES
Restoring stable power supply encountered some hitches on July 12 when the EDC “experienced problems in backfeed current flow” where they had difficulty figuring out what went wrong as no current flowing at the time despite having checked the already rechecked transformer units and replaced parts.
EDC targeted to be able to deliver additional 64MW of electricity at 10 p.m. on July 13 from its geothermal power plants.
Since Ormoc only needs around 60MW during peak hours, EDC could have supplied the excess 4MW to other areas through NGCP.