Visayas grid on yellow alert

MANILA, Philippines — The Visayas grid was placed under yellow alert for eight hours yesterday following the forced outages of power plants and the increase in electricity demand.

The alert notice, issued when power reserves are low, was raised from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. yesterday, according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.

The NGCP said 733.5 megawatts of capacity were unavailable to the grid after at least 17 plants went offline while six others operated at reduced capacities. The outage of another power plant also cut electricity imports from Mindanao by 30 MW.

The notice marked the third time the Visayas grid had been placed under yellow alert this month.

The power grids in Luzon and Mindanao, meanwhile, remained in normal condition.

As of Aug. 4, most of the plants that experienced unplanned outages were coal-fired facilities, according to Manila-based think tank Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities.

The ICSC said the recurring grid alerts have signaled “deeper reliability issues” in coal plants, highlighting the urgent need to diversify the country’s energy portfolio.

“Addressing this challenge requires moving away from large baseload coal plants and toward a more flexible and distributed energy system,” the think tank said.

Latest Department of Energy data showed that coal accounted for the largest share of the country’s power mix at 63 percent, followed by renewable energy (22 percent) and natural gas (14 percent).