The Visayas power grid remained under red alert for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday as limited power supply struggled to keep pace with demand, while the Mindanao grid was placed under yellow alert amid several power plant outages.
The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said the Visayas grid would be under yellow alert from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., followed by red alert from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Available capacity in the Visayas was placed at about 2,283 megawatts (MW), below the projected peak demand of 2,360 MW.
The limited operating margin also leaves insufficient capacity to meet the grid’s regulating requirement, prompting the red alert.
The tight supply was attributed to the continued forced outage of Units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc. and Unit 1 of Cebu Energy Development Corp.
Power imports from Mindanao were also reduced due to the maintenance outage of Unit 2 of GNPower Kauswagan in Lanao del Norte and the emergency shutdown of GNPower Kauswagan Unit 1 because of a boiler tube leak.
NGCP said six power plants have gone on forced outage in August alone, while more than 20 other plants have remained unavailable since as early as 2021.
Another 13 power plants are operating at reduced capacities, resulting in an estimated loss of about 903.2 MW in available supply.
The Mindanao grid, meanwhile, was placed under yellow alert from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., noon to 4 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
NGCP said Mindanao had about 2,785 MW of available capacity against projected peak demand of 2,604 MW.
The grid’s supply has also been affected by plant outages, with 16 power plants on forced outage this month alone.
These are in addition to 12 plants that have been unavailable since last year and eight plants operating at derated capacities.
The outages and reduced operating capacities have resulted in an estimated 713.7 MW loss in available supply in Mindanao.
The alerts reflect the narrowing gap between available generation and demand as several power plants remain offline or operate below their rated capacities.
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