LIMITED POWER SUPPLY
By NELSON V. CONSTANTINO
Editor-in-Chief
THE National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has placed the Visayas grid under red alert on Tuesday due to limited power supply from both the grid and imports from Mindanao, which was also declared under yellow alert during the day.
Later that day, the NGCP also issued an advisory putting the Visayas grid under yellow alert status from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
It said this came as the available capacity is projected to be around 2,225 megawatts (MW) while peak demand is projected to reach 2,410 MW.
For the Mindanao grid, the yellow alert is up from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Available capacity is pegged at around 2,672MW while peak demand is forecast to hit 2,627MW.
A yellow alert is issued when a grid’s operating margin is insufficient to meet contingency requirements, while a red alert is raised when the power supply is inadequate to meet both consumer demand and the grid’s regulating requirements.
NGCP attributed the low supply in the Visayas to the unavailability of Units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc., and Unit 1 of the Cebu Energy Development Corporation (CEDC).
It said power imports from Mindanao were also limited due to the extended outage of Unit 2 of Sarangani Energy Corp., the maintenance outage of Unit 2 of GNPower Kauswagan, and the emergency shutdown of GNPK Unit 1 caused by a boiler tube leak amid high system demand.
On top of these is the unavailability of several power plants: five for August alone, with more than 20 on forced outage since 2021.
NGCP said 14 other generating units are also operating at derated capacities, resulting in a total loss of 924.7 MW for the Visayas grid alone.
Due to the low capacity in the Visayas grid, it imports power from both the Luzon and Mindanao grids.
For the Mindanao grid, NGCP said 12 power plants are on forced outage this month alone, while 13 are unavailable since 2024 and five are operating at derated capacities, for a total of 709.1 MW loss for the grid. (with a report from PNA)
