Philippines' Earth Hour 2011 - A Success!

I woke up reading tweets from VECO on the load being dropped regarding the Earth Hour 2011 on March 26, between 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm. VECO reports:

"EARTH HOUR RESULTS: The highest load drop In the VECO franchise area was 18 MW. Thank you to all those who participated!"

"EARTH HOUR RESULTS: As of 9:30 demand for VECO franchise area dropped to 248.89 MW."

"EARTH HOUR RESULTS: As of 9:15 p.m. demand dropped further to 249.76 MW in the VECO franchise area."

"In the VECO franchise area , As of 8:45 p.m. demand dropped to 257.1 MW. As of 9:00 p.m. it dropped further to 254.68 MW."

"AS of 8:45 p.m. VECO load dropped from 266.646 MW to 257.503 MW. Thank you for your support to Earth Hour!"

So from, VECO reports, about 9MW dropped after 15 minutes of the start of the energy conservation. Less than a MW dropped at 9:00 pm. At 9:15 pm, another chunk of about 7MW was dropped. Fifteen minutes after that, less than a MW was turned off. So at the end of the Earth Hour, VECO tweets that about 18MW was conserved.

Conserving that amount of energy,18MWh, is a big pull. It is a big accomplishment. What more if we look at the overall picture in the Philippines as a whole.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figures 1-3 illustrates the load trend from the past Saturdays of March 2011. If we want to know the impact of the hour, we look at the load reduction in March 26 compared to March 19, March 12 and March 5. In this way, we are assuming that the load cycle exercised by the residential, industrial and commercial consumers are all alike. The insets in the figures shows that the hour of 8 pm to 10 pm in March 26 is at the lowest level compared with the other Saturdays except for the Luzon between the March 5th and the 26th at around 10:00 pm. 

Figure 3

A simple quantification of the load reduction is conducted by subtracting the average MW difference with the March 26th to other Saturdays in March 2011. The table below shows the numbers. All negative MW difference are good indicators. The positive number is as discussed above.

Table 1

Last year's Earth Hour seems to have failed. This year, the Earth Hour in the Philippines is a resounding success!

PHL Power Plants in Google Map

'There is no known exhaustive locational map of Philippine power plants on-line. So, from this need, I took my free time to work.

From Nick Nichols post on "Philippine Power Plants – Carbon Emissions", I got the link to Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA). CARMA has a massive database for power plants' carbon emission which also contains locations of the plants using latitude and longitude. Their database on the generating plants in the Philippines are around 512 power plants. The list includes generation connected to the transmission grid, embedded generation and some generation used by industrial and commercial facilities. Though they have that number of plants, only about 250 plants have specific location.

I utilized an online tool to generate the KML file for Google Map which is free from Earth Point. The tool requires a spreadsheet format of the dataset which was prepared in OpenOffice Calc, a free software. The KML file generated is also compatible with Google Earth.

Here are the figures of the mapping of the power plants.

PHL Luzon Power Plants

View PHL Luzon Power Plants in a larger map

PHL Visayas-Mindanao Power Plants

View PHL Vis-Min Power Plants in a larger map

There are ways to improve this work. Classify the power plants using color code by fuel type, grid or distribution or industrial connected, or by classifying them by capacity level or by classifying the plants' cost of power.

The keyword here is FREE. Free time. Free data. Free tools. Good project!

Update: I categorized the power plants by region -- Luzon and Vis-Min. The map displays are having error on this blog because of the limitation of number of rows read by Earth Point. 03-25-2011

Leyte Mindanao Interconnection Project

When the Leyte Luzon HVDC project was conceived, part of the plan was to extend the interconnection to Mindanao. From ABB, the figure below presents the interconnection projects.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) is now seeking approval for the LMIP, as reported by the Inquirer.

The Leyte Luzon link is a Current Sourced Converter (CSC) HVDC. This is the reason why reactive compensation is needed in its operation to support real power transfer and limitation of harmonics. When transmission lines are toppled in the Bicol region due to typhoons, the MW dispatch of the HVDC was curtailed due to the low short circuit capacity (SCC) in the area. Low SCC may result to commutation failure in the valves when voltage is weak on the AC system. This link also requires to operate between a minimum and a maximum MW bandwidth.

With the LMIP, I am guessing the technology of Voltage Sourced Converters (VSC) HVDC will be used. The side of Mindanao has been suffering with generation deficit thus will have low SCC and less reactive power support. VSC HVDC can be used in such case. Reactive power compensation is not required in VSC HVDC to transfer real power since it can operate independent of real and reactive power. Also, at high switching frequency for the VSC HVDC, less filtering or switchable harmonic filters are not needed. With this, if LMIP uses VSC HVDC, it can be utilized to start-up the Mindanao grid after a major outage or blackout since it can operate at low SCC or weak AC system. Another advantage is VSC HVDC can operate between 0% and 100% of rated active power in controllable in both directions without the need of DC voltage reversal since both Mindanao and Visayas need generation capacity to satisfy growth demand.

The Philippine power grids are one of the most advanced power systems in the South East Asian region having CSC HVDC, wind power and solar power integrated into the electric system. With the proposal of LMIP, new technology like VSC HVDC may find a way to connect and power the islands.

Wind Power Capacity Value in the Philippines

Prof. Rowaldo Del Mundo, my respected professor in UP-Diliman, came out with the study of quantifying the value of wind power in terms of capacity last year. I believe this is welcome advancement in understanding the contribution of wind energy in the country. As investments in renewable energy sources are coming in, studies like this are sure to support the anticipated technical and economic impacts of integrating wind power into the grid.

However, just as I was taught by the good professor, there are some loopholes in the study I thought needing some discussion thereof.

First, the study considered wind power plants to have an equivalent forced outage rate (EFOR). Forced outage rate (FOR)  is computed using the mean time to failure and the mean time to repair of a component of a generating plant to be in service or not. The Philippine Grid Code defines FOR as:

From this premise, FOR is a component based value not a fuel availability based variable. Wind power is variable. A wind farm stops to produce power when wind stops blowing, not mainly because a component in the wind farm fails.

An accepted approach to overcome the FOR modeling of a wind farm is to model the wind power output as a negative load. Studies here and here by IEEE and NERC uses this practical strategy since load is variable and adding wind power increases the variability is the power system. With this, you don't have to assume an EFOR for electrical or mechanical components inside the wind farm since they don't really fail, its just that the wind is not blowing.

Second, the study's conclusion includes this: The maximum penetration limit is, at the end not a technical issue, it is an economic issue that must  be resolved based on willingness to pay of the consumers.

I remember that when the 1216MW Sual power plant suffered failure and resulted to a Luzon wide blackout. Imagine the peak load of Luzon as about 6500MW, the capacity output of Sual is 25% of that loading condition. Which gives us a scenario that a plant generating 25% of the demand level provides risk in the system operational reliability. If wind power penetration becomes 25% of any demand level, we are merely replicating the possibility of what happened in 2001 since wind is variable. The integration of any energy resource in any grid would always be a technical issue. That is why Prof. Del Mundo was part of the team who they developed the Grid Code and the Distribution Code.

A single study must not generalize such conclusion without looking at all angles and involving all stakeholders.

Third, the study cites that the capacity value of wind in the Luzon grid is nil. Zero. Nada. This is surprising. Any resource adds capacity. Any amount of energy resource penetration level adds value. Below is a figure from this IEEE study.

 

The figure above tells us that there is a certain capacity value relative to a certain amount of wind power penetration in various electric transmission systems. I am wondering what is very unique in the Philippine electric power systems to have wind power assessed as having no capacity value when added to the grid.  

Wind power will play an important role in the energy situation in our country though it is variable in nature. It will add resource and capacity together with conventional plants, much needed as demand grows. We must study its impact carefully.

IEEE Test Systems in PowerWorld

I modeled IEEE test systems for electric power engineering in the software PowerWorld. The data came from this website - Power Systems Test Case Archive. The 14 bus system, 30 bus system and 24 bus system are most widely used for education and research.

The modifications applied to the power systems were basically adding thermal ratings for the branches. This will results into some overloads in the system. The IEEE 24 bus of Reliability Test System (RTS) has an increased percentage in loads to create problems in voltage and branch loading.

The main purpose of the problems arising from the modifications is to stimulate education among students to solve the problems in pre and post- contingencies.

The following figures present the thermal violations in the test power systems.

IEEE 14 Bus System Thermal Violation

IEEE-RTS 24 Bus System Thermal Violations

IEEE 30 Bus System Thermal Violations

You can download the files which were developed in version 15 of PowerWorld software from this link here.

Solar Application at Princeton University Campus

This is a solar application at the campus of Princeton University near the main street of Nassau. The solar panels are energizing sign post including a map and bus line directions. The sign post can be switch on as depicted in Pictures 3 and 4.

Being a case of academic application of renewable energy, professors and students can draw a lot from this small scale renewable energy project. 

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4