Power firm starts maintenance shutdown of coal plant

STARTING today, Saturday, Steag State Power Inc. (SPI) will be implementing preventive maintenance shutdown of its Unit 1 105 megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental.
 
Jerome R. Soldevilla, Steag communications officer, said in a statement that the shutdown will run until November 4.

Aside from the 105 MW electric generation unit, SPI will also conduct maintenance shutdown of its Unit 2 105 MW starting October 29 until November 10.
 
Soldevilla said carrying out the maintenance works as planned and scheduled will bring in long-term benefits to power consumers in Mindanao in terms of the power plant’s operational reliability.
 
SPI’s Mindanao Power Plant has sustained an impressive availability rate of 93.3 percent and a low unplanned outage rate of less than one percent during its first six years of operation.
 
But even with its relatively long outage this month, SPI is confident it can still achieve a high availability rate of 91 percent by the end of 2012.
 
SPI is a special purpose company established to build, operate and maintain Mindanao’s first coal-fired power plant. It is principally owned by Steag GmbH, one of the largest electricity producers in Germany and a market leader in clean coal technology and biomass power plants.
 
SPI’s power plant is considered as the most modern and the biggest in Mindanao on a per unit capacity. It has so far delivered more than 8.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWH) of electricity representing about 20 percent of Mindanao’s total power supply.
 
Soldevilla said this will be the first time for SPI to undertake such a relatively long planned plant outage in six years after it started full commercial operations on November 15, 2006.
 
He said the planned preventive maintenance shutdown has been approved by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) as recommended by the Mindanao Grid Operations and Maintenance Planning Group.
 
The Group is composed of the NGCP, the National Power Corporation (NPC) and its Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
 
The company said the timing of the shutdown takes into consideration the power plant’s operations and maintenance guidelines as well as the projected electricity demand-supply condition of Mindanao during the period.
 
It said the overarching goal is to minimize the possible adverse impact of power supply shortfall in the island.
 
Earlier, Soldevilla said they had already coordinated with the Cagayan Electric Power and Light Company (Cepalco) to address the possible effects of the maintenance work.
 
He assured that Cagayan de Oro will not be affected by the rotating brownouts as Cepalco guaranteed it has enough reserve power supply to provide for its consumers while SPI is doing maintenance work.