MANILA – The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Luzon grid on yellow alert Thursday due to insufficient power supply.
In an advisory, NGCP said the alert will be in effect from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. following the tripping of several power plants.
A yellow alert is issued when power supply reserves fall to a thin margin over demand.
Available capacity stands at 12,223 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 11,996 MW.
NGCP said 35 plants are on forced outage, while 14 are operating at reduced capacity, leaving 5,137.2 MW unavailable.
Among the causes were outages at Units 1, 2, and 3 of Excellent Energy Resources Inc. and Block B of the Ilijan Power Plant in Batangas, as well as the shutdown of Magat hydro units 1 to 4 in Isabela.
The Visayas grid will also be under yellow alert from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., with available capacity at 2,597 MW versus peak demand of 2,368 MW.
Fifteen plants are on forced outage, and 13 are running on reduced capacity, resulting in 679.2 MW unavailable, NGCP said.
The alert was also attributed to the lack of power imports from Luzon via the high-voltage direct current (HVDC) link. (PNA)
