DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/24 May) — Therma South Inc. (TSI) will shut down for one month the 150-megawatt unit 2 of its coal-fired power plant in Barangay Binugao in Toril, this city, the company announced Tuesday.
In a statement, TSI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aboitiz Power Corp. said the shutdown will last from June 18 to July 16 to facilitate maintenance works.
The shutdown will mean a loss of 130 MW from the Mindanao grid, 20 MW being the house load or the capacity needed to run the system.
TSI has scheduled another maintenance shutdown on unit 1 later this year.
“Power plants have planned shutdowns for it to run optimally and reliably,” the statement said.
It added the power firm coordinated with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines on its plans to implement maintenance shutdowns so that their schedules will not coincide with those of other power plants.
“We are confident that after this outage, TSI should be better equipped to reliably meet the needs of our customers as the rainy season begins in Mindanao. We will try our best to keep the duration of this interruption to a minimum,” said TSI President and COO Sebastian R. Lacson.
The P35-billion coal-plant was inaugurated last Jan. 8 this year and has since experienced four shutdowns – once for TSI 1 and thrice for TSI 2.
The first shutdown for TSI 2 lasted for eight days, from Jan. 26 to Feb. 2, followed by a 10-day shutdown from Feb. 16 to 26 and then on March 3.
TSI 1, meanwhile, bogged down last April 6 but was synchronized back to the grid on April 17.
The tripping was triggered by an incident where a tree fell on NGCP’s Davao-Toril 138-kilovolt transmission line.
A total of 100 MW has been contracted to Davao Light and Power Company, another subsidiary of Aboitiz Power, while the rest will be delivered to more than 20 electric cooperatives and distribution utilities in Caraga, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, parts of Bukidnon, Misamis and Zamboanga Peninsula. (Antonio L. Colina IV/MindaNews)