Philippines strengthening electricity backbone

Project will be located in western Luzon island.

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, the national transmission firm, wants provisional authority from the government to implement the 500 kilovolt backbone project in western Luzon. The project will cost some US$80 million.

NGCP said the immediate implementation of the western Luzon project will connect the 600MW coal-fired power plant of Redondo Peninsula Energy at the Subic Bay Freeport in Zambales province.

It said the backbone will ensure the overall reliability, security and stability of the grid during contingency events. The Bolo-Nagsaag-San Jose 500kV double-circuit line is the backbone transmission line of the Luzon grid.

It transmits electricity from the 1,200MW Sual and 600MW Masinloc coal-fired power plants to the load center of the Luzon grid.

NGCP said the Sual and Masinloc power plants had planned capacity expansions of 600MW and 382MW, respectively, which will result in a total generation capacity of 2,782 MW, a heavier load for the existing 500-kV backbone.

NGCP proposes a long-term plan for 500kV backbone development to provide a higher level of reliability and to avoid an outage in an event of a double-circuit tripping.