By Myrna M. Velasco – May 21, 2021, 8:00 AM
from Manila Bulletin
Transmission firm National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has indicated that it surpassed performance targets that had been prescribed for it to achieve in operating and managing the country’s power transmission network and facilities.
It specified that among the key indicators that it continued to outperform is frequency of tripping (FOT), an index which measures the number of times that high voltage transmission lines had tripped or had experienced force outages in every 100-circuit kilometers.
The company further noted that its performance last year exhibited “a significant decrease in tripping incidents across all three major island grids.”
In the biggest power grid of Luzon, in particular, NGCP cited that “the number has gone down significantly” to 0.932 last year from 3.985 in 2008, which was the year before it took over the operations of the country’s power transmission system.
Essentially, it was pointed out that such redounded to 76.6-percent drop in tripping incidents, which is a major improvement and had in turn resulted in better service to consumers because that brought down probabilities of service disruptions that could distress them.
In the Visayas grid, tripping incidents declined to 0.335, logging a substantial drop of 92.6-percent from 4.542 in 2008; while in Mindanao, there was also significant reduction of 93.6-percent to 0.504 in 2020 from 7.951 more than a decade ago.
The transmission company expounded that “the FOT is the most tangible proof of our performance felt by end-users.”
The company said its enhanced performance had been mainly attributed to the continuous improvement and upgrading projects, such as wood pole replacement, substation additions, capacitor bank projects and new transmission lines.”
NGCP said it similarly reinforced the capability of the grid, so the system can withstand power interruptions, and these are measured via “system availability (SA) indicator and system interruption severity index (SISI).”
In terms of the SA index, the transmission firm emphasized that it scored 99.208-percent for Luzon; 99.764-percent in Visayas; and 99.736-percent in Mindanao; while for SISI, Luzon garnered 0.869 system minutes last year from 9.537 in 2008; 10.010 in Visayas last year vis-à-vis 83.559 about 12 years ago; and then for Mindanao, it improved to 9.124 versus 10.434 more than a decade ago.
NGCP further claimed “all three grids have significantly reduced, if not completely eliminated, violations on frequency and voltage limits,” adding that Luzon grid specifically had posted 100-percent or it had no violations on frequency limit compliance (FLC) since 2010. As explained, FLC gauges the percentage of time “where the system frequency is within the allowable range of 60 ± 0.3 Hertz, which is being subscribed to as the optimal operating frequency of the transmission system.
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