THE National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has once more issued red and yellow alerts for the Visayas grid on Wednesday, as some major power plants continued to be offline with electricity demand expected to be huge in the island group.
The red alert was between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., while the yellow alert was between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. as peak demand in Visayas was estimated to reach 2,557 megawatts (MW), while the available capacity there was only at 2,583 MW.
NGCP said that on Oct. 21, 23 plants were on forced outage, while 21 plants were running on derated capacities, for a total of 603.3 MW that is unavailable to the grid.
NGCP said that the red and yellow alerts were mainly due to the continued unavailability of the Panay Energy Development Corp. Unit 3 and Kepco SPC Power Corp. Unit 1 plants, and the limited power imports from Mindanao due to the planned outages of some power plants there.
A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement.
Meanwhile, a yellow alert status is given out when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
On a year-to-date basis, Visayas has experienced 46 red alerts and 122 yellow alerts, while Mindanao had four red alerts and 17 yellow alerts.
