Visayas grid placed under 4-hour red alert
CEBU, Philippines — The Visayas grid was placed yet again under red and yellow alerts on Saturday due to the unavailability of large coal-powered plants and limited imports from the Mindanao grid.
The red alert status took effect in Visayas from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., while the yellow alert was in effect from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines raises the red alert status when the power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand. In Visayas’s case, available power capacity of 2,109 megawatts could not handle the peak demand of 2,346 MW.
Three large coal plants in the region remained offline: Units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) and Unit 3 of the Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC).
That’s on top of 33 plants that went into forced outage, including 11 just this September, and 14 plants running at derated capacity—hindering Visayas with 1,052 MW of electricity.
The 169-MW TVI 2 was just restored after months of repairs, while the 169-MW TVI 1 is expected to return by Sept. 15. PEDC 3 will resume operations on Oct. 3.
Visayas could not get more power from Mindanao because the latter is also experiencing tight supply.
NGCP placed the Mindanao grid under yellow alert status from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., with peak demand of 2,456 MW nearly consuming the available capacity of 2,623 MW.
A total of 206 MW was lost from the grid due to the unavailability of Units 2 and 3 of the GNPower Kauswagan (GNPK) large coal-powered plants in Lanao del Norte.
In addition, 29 power plants are on forced outage, including 13 just this month, and 7 are at derated capacity.
GNPK 2 is expected to resume operations on Sept. 20, while there is no information yet for GNPK 3. — (FREEMAN)
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