Yellow alert for Visayas grid as power demand rises
The Visayas continued to suffer from thin power reserves as the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) issued another yellow alert on Thursday due to the outages of three large coal plants and an increase in electricity demand.
The yellow alert—which was in effect from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.— was the fourth to be issued this week. A yellow alert indicates that available power reserves are thinning, meaning any unexpected plant outage could trigger service interruptions.
As of 1:30 p.m., the NGCP said about 870.2 megawatts (MW) was unavailable to the grid, with more power plants on forced shutdown, while some facilities were operating at derated capacities.
The available capacity was 2,670 MW, while peak demand was at 2,479 MW. Since the start of the year, the Visayas grid has been put under yellow alert 11 times.
Last week, it was also placed under red alert from May 13 to May 15, leaving several households in the dark.
