MANILA, Philippines — The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Visayas grid under yellow alert on Thursday afternoon amid reduced generating capacity caused by outages at several power plants and rising electricity demand.
In an advisory, NGCP said the yellow alert would be in effect from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on June 25.
Available capacity in the Visayas grid was projected at 2,504 megawatts (MW), only 146 MW above the expected peak demand of 2,358 MW.
A yellow alert is issued when the operating margin falls below the transmission grid's contingency requirement, indicating that power supply reserves are thin but sufficient to meet expected demand.
NGCP attributed the alert to the unavailability of three large coal-fired power units, TVI 1, TVI 2 and PEDC 3, as well as higher demand forecasts.
The grid operator reported that 10 power plants were on forced outage in June alone.
An additional eight plants have remained offline since May, one since March, three since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021.
Meanwhile, 16 generating units were operating at reduced capacities.
In total, about 1,030.5 MW of generation capacity was unavailable to the Visayas grid due to plant outages and deratings.
The yellow alert highlights the continuing vulnerability of the Visayas power system to supply disruptions, particularly when major baseload plants are unavailable during periods of elevated demand.
Power stakeholders have repeatedly emphasized the need for additional generation capacity and improved reliability of existing plants to ensure sufficient reserves and avoid tighter supply conditions that could lead to red alerts and possible service interruptions.
No rotational power interruptions had been announced as of Thursday morning.
