MANILA, Philippines — The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) on Tuesday issued red and yellow alerts for the Visayas and Mindanao grids, as major power plants remained unavailable.
In its 8 a.m. advisory, the transmission firm said that the yellow alert for the Visayas grid would be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.; red alert between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. as peak demand is expected to reach 2,410 megawatts (MW), while available capacity is only at P2,226 MW.
Meanwhile for Mindanao, the yellow alert will be between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. as peak demand is expected to reach 2,527 MW, while available capacity is only at 2,672 MW.
For Visayas, NGCP said that 26 plants were on forced outage, while 14 were running on derated capacities, for a total of 924.7 MW unavailable to the grid.
The unavailability of Visayas' large coal plants --Therma Visayas Inc. Unit 1, Therma Visayas Inc. Unit 2, and Cebu Energy Development Corp. Unit 1; and limited power importation from Mindanao prompted the NGCP to raise the yellow and red alerts.
Meanwhile, 25 plants are on forced outage, while 5 plants are running on derated capacities, for a total of 709.1 MW unavailable to the Mindanao grid.
The emergency shutdown of GNPK 1 due to a boiler tube leak; ongoing planned maintenance outage of GNPK 2; and extended outage of SEC 2 prompted the NGCP to raise the yellow alert for the Mindanao grid.
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 is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
