THE National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Luzon grid on yellow alert Sunday with more than 4,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity unavailable to the grid.
In an advisory Sunday afternoon, the grid operator raised the yellow alert for the period 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 12 midnight on May 27.
Available capacity was 11,127 MW while peak demand was estimated at 10,776 MW.
The NGCP said that three power plants have been on forced outage since 2023, two between January and March 2024, and 17 between April and May. Six are running on derated capacities.
A total of 4,417.5 MW was unavailable to the grid.
A yellow alert is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
As of its 1:23 p.m. update, the NGCP said that Pitogo-Mulanay 69-kilovolt line has been unavailable starting 2:24 a.m. Sunday, affecting the customers of Quezon I Electric Cooperative, Inc. The transmission line was partially restored at 9:01 a.m.
On May 24, Manila Electric Co. said that around 487,000 customers were affected after it implemented manual load dropping or rotational power interruptions lasting around 1-1.5 hours due to supply deficiencies on the grid.
Areas affected were parts of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Metro Manila, Rizal, and Pampanga. — Sheldeen Joy Talavera