Yellow alert raised on Visayas grid

MANILA, Philippines — The Visayas grid was placed under yellow alert for five hours yesterday following the tripping of a thermal plant and the emergency shutdown of a geothermal facility.

The yellow alert, issued when power reserves are low, was raised from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.

The NGCP said the Visayas grid experienced a thinner operating margin as 338 megawatts of coal capacity went offline, while a geothermal plant saw its output reduced to just 39.3 MW from 79.5 MW.

Since April, 14 power plants have been on a forced outage, with two more facilities out of service since 2023. This added to the strain caused by 14 others that have been operating at a reduced capacity, resulting in the unavailability of 898.6 MW to the grid.

Peak power demand in the Visayas was 2,351 MW, while available capacity was only 2,649 MW.

Power grids in Luzon and Mindanao remained normal.