Manila: Power supply continues to be an issue in both the Visayas and Mindanao grids, prompting the issuance of red and yellow alerts anew for Tuesday. The Visayas grid is on red alert from 2 p.m. until 9 p.m., and yellow alert from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m, and from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m., the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) announced. This is because available capacity is estimated at around 2,168 megawatts (MW), well below both demand and the grid's regulating requirements.
According to Philippines News Agency, capacity is limited by, among others, the forced outages of major coal-fired power plants, namely Unit 1 of Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) and Unit 3 of Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC). NGCP said supply imports from the Mindanao grid are also low. The unavailable generating units of TVI and PEDC are among the 10 in the Visayas grid that are not working for August alone, while 20 other power plants are on forced outage as far back as five years ago. There are also 17 other units operating at derated capacities, bringing the total capacity loss across the grid to approximately 813.9 MW.
NGCP issues a yellow alert when a grid's operating margin is short of the contingency requirement, while a red alert is raised when supply is insufficient to meet both the consumer demand and the grid's regulating requirement. Relatively, the Mindanao grid is on yellow alert from 1 p.m. until 8 p.m, as available capacity is pegged to be around 2,555MW while peak demand is projected to hit 2,450MW.
Outages at major power plants are also a primary factor contributing to the low power supply. The grid operator cited the unavailability of Unit 2 of GNPower Kauswagan, as well as the forced outages of GNPK1 and Unit 2 of Therma South, Inc., as key contributors. NGCP said 20 power plants in Mindanao were unavailable last August alone, while nine others have not been working since 2024. Six others are working at derated performance, for a total loss of around 766.3MW.
The Visayas and Mindanao grids have been experiencing forced outages during the summer due to high demand and low capacity, as some power plants are under maintenance shutdown while others are on forced outage due to several factors. Authorities said measures are being undertaken, such as tapping battery-powered generators to boost capacity.
