Luzon, Visayas grids on yellow alert anew

MANILA, Philippines — The Luzon and Visayas grids remained under yellow alert yesterday, according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).

This developed as six generation companies have been asked to explain outages of their respective power plants, resulting in the Luzon and Visayas grids being placed on red and yellow alert since April 16.

Available capacity for the Luzon grid was at 14,568 megawatts yesterday amid a peak demand of 13,941 MW.

In the Visayas grid, available capacity was at 2,829 MW as peak demand stood at 2,555 MW.

The Mindanao grid was on normal status following its yellow alert status on Wednesday.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) did not identify the generation companies under investigation, but assured the public that preliminary findings would be disclosed by the first week of May to determine whether show-cause orders would be issued for possible violations of outage allowances.

The ERC had earlier committed to probe forced outages by collecting information and reviewing reports from affected stakeholders.

ERC chairperson and chief executive officer Monalisa Dimalanta said the agency is studying additional measures given the extraordinary increase in demand due to the effects of El Niño and unavailability of supply or reserves.

Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan said the current power demand for Luzon has exceeded projections of 13,917 MW.

The NGCP said the highest Luzon grid peak load for the year, which occurred on Wednesday, was at 14,016 MW.

”We saw the correlation between the rise in temperature and our (power) supply,” Marasigan said in an interview over dzBB.

He said El Niño has caused hydropower facilities to go on shutdown as water levels decreased.

The DOE said 4,164.92 MW of power projects would be online this year.