Manila: The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has placed the Visayas grid on yellow alert from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday due to insufficient operating margin as several power plants are unavailable or at derated capacities.

According to Philippines News Agency, the power transmission operator reported that the grid has an available capacity of 2,694 megawatts (MW) while peak demand is around 2,351 MW. A yellow alert is issued when the margin between the capacity and expected peak demand is small.

The NGCP cited the unavailability of Therma Visayas Inc.’s (TVI) coal-fired power plant units 1 and 2, each with a capacity of 169MW, and the emergency shutdown of the Leyte Geothermal Power Plant Unit 3 (LGPP 3), which reduced its capacity from 79.5MW to 39.3MW, as major factors for the yellow alert.

A total of 898.6MW is unavailable to the grid because 14 plants are currently on forced outage, and 14 are operating at reduced capacities. However, the NGCP did not disclose the specific factors contributing to the reduction in capacity of these two power plants.

Despite the alert in the Visayas, the NGCP assured that both the Luzon and Mindanao grids remain in normal condition.