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The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines has finally identified the cause of the Mindanao-wide Easter Sunday dawn power outage.
In a media advisory sent to the Cagayan de Oro Energy Press Corps, NGCP Communications Officer Elizabeth Ladaga said the outage was caused by a “technical issue at the Agus switchyard.”
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Agus 6 Maria Cristina Plant
Apparently, a conductor at the Capacitor Voltage Transformer (CVT) of Agus 6-Agus 7 138 kV tie line was detached and touched the grounded part of the CVT.
Ladaga said NGCP restored power transmissions services to all customers in Mindanao on Sunday, April 5 at around 7:50AM after the grid-wide power interruption which started around 1:00AM of the same day.
Industry sources who requested to remain anonymous said initially the Aurora-Naga (Ipil) line was interrupted in the early hours. Consequently, the damaged CVT equipment in Agus 6 was found to have caused the tripping of the Aurora-Naga (Ipil) line.
However, later Monday a down conductor/insulator in Tower 3 of the NPC-owned Tie line was discovered to have caused a high current fault which damaged the CVT. Protective relays sensed this and caused more lines to be tripped, which consequently caused the tripping of power lines in the process.
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Agus 6 Overview
The Department of Energy was quick to rule out security issues as the cause of the outage. DOE Sec. Carlos Jericho Petilla said such incidents are to be expected in the Mindanao grid during the summer months when the Agus-Pulangi hydropower complex which produces over half of the island’s power have low production due to the dry spell and the grid has little or no reserves.