MANILA (Updated) -- A power blackout hit most parts of Luzon, including Metro Manila, on Wednesday due to the sudden outage of the five power plants in the Luzon grid, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.
The affected power plants are the Santa Rita Natural Gas (1,000 megawatt capacity), San Lorenzo Combined Cycle Gas (500 MW), Ilijan Natural Gas (1,200 MW), Quezon Power Coal (440 MW), and Sual 1 Coal (1,000 MW).
NGCP, the country's power transmission highway operator, said that due to the problem on the five power plants, a total of 3,700 megawatts (MW) was offline.
"The blackout was caused by generation deficiency due to unplanned outage of five power plants supplying electricity to the Luzon grid," NGCP said on Twitter.
Prior to the outage, NGCP said the system capacity for Luzon on Wednesday was 8,983 MW with the expected system peak of 8,256 MW or supposed reserve of 727 MW. But because five power plants suddenly shut down, the reserve was totally wiped out, resulting in a much larger deficiency of energy capacity.
"We could not immediately determine what specific areas have been affected but reports from the field said the power outage is widespread," said Lilibeth Gaydowen, NGCP communications officer.
Power interruptions were experienced in Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, Cavite, Laguna, Pangasinan and Bicol Region.
Meanwhile, Malacañang assured that the government is taking steps to ensure uninterrupted power supply on May 13, election day.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte, in a statement, said that President Benigno Aquino III asked Secretary Jericho Petilla of the regular updates on the power situation.
"The President was assured that there is adequate power for election day and every step is being taken to ensure electricity supply nationwide on election day," she said.
Valte was conducting a press briefing when the power supply in Malacañang went off Wednesday.
Generators were used to supply power in the different offices in Malacañang Complex for almost four hours.
In the franchised areas of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), including Metro Manila, the power interruption started at 1:51 p.m.
Rotating brownouts were monitored in the cities of Quezon, Parañaque, Pasig and other parts of Metro Manila.
The power interruptions have suspended the operations of the Light Rail Transit Lines 1 and 2, prompting LRT officials to place their operation under code red.
Hernando Cabrera, LRT spokesman, said that LRT-2 trains went back to normal operations at 2:45 p.m. But LRT1 operations remained suspended.
As of Wednesday night, NGCP said that it has no information on the time of the restoration of the power plants.
"NGCP assures the public that its transmission lines are secure and fully-functional. It will dispatch available capacities once the power plants are restored and online," it said. (SDR/Sunnex)