PRIVATELY owned National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said on Wednesday that fewer tripping incidents had been recorded across the country’s main grids since it took over the transmission system.
“Since NGCP took over transmission operations in 2009, we performed over and above our targets year-on-year. This is a result of the company’s commitment to deliver on our mandate to provide quality transmission services,” NGCP said in a statement.
NGCP said its overall performance had been “significantly better” since it took over the transmission system. It said the frequency of tripping for the 2009-2022 period decreased to 1.3386 from 6.4732 in the 2000-2008 period in the Luzon power grid alone.
The frequency of tripping measures the number of times high-voltage transmission lines tripped or went on forced outages for every 100 circuit kilometers.
In the Visayas power grid, tripping incidents were down by 85.7% to 0.9508 from 6.6530, while in Mindanao, these dropped 83.6% to 1.3285 from 8.0788.
NGCP has also introduced improvements to the grid’s capability to mitigate the impact of power interruptions on grid operations, it said.
For the 2009-2022 period, the system availability (SA) indicator and system interruption severity index (SISI) for the three main grids improved versus the 2000-2008 period.
It said that for Luzon, SA is 99.3160%, while those of the Visayas and Mindanao were at 99.6538% and 99.7206%, respectively.
SISI for Luzon averaged 10.7236 system minutes of interruption versus 13.8978 in 2000-2008. The Visayas logged 47.3318 system minutes of interruption from 176.3350 previously, while Mindanao averaged 9.124 system minutes from 10.434.
Earlier, NGCP said that it had invested about P300 billion in improving the power transmission system since taking over it in 2009.
Between 2009 and 2022, the company said that it had completed about 56 projects deemed vital to the energy industry. The grid operator said its ongoing transmission projects would further improve the country’s transmission sector.
“We assure our stakeholders that NGCP’s ongoing projects and programs seek only to further improve our services,” it said.
The Department of Energy has said that it expects to start its review of the operations of NGCP within this year, amid calls to renationalize grid operations. The call to review NGCP’s performance stemmed from the tripping of a transmission line on May 8, which raised red and yellow alerts over the Luzon grid.
The department has also blamed delayed transmission projects for the tight power supply in the country.
NGCP has committed to completing its transmission projects, which are considered vital to further improve the supply of energy this year. — Ashley Erika O. Jose