NGCP raises yellow alert on electricity over Visayas grid anew on Oct. 17

MANILA, Philippines — Merely hours after it lifted its power supply warning, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) on Saturday raised again the yellow alert over the Visayas power grid from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The warning comes as the power plants remained unavailable and maintenance work affected electricity supply.

A yellow alert indicates that the power supply can still meet demand, but there is a warning that a plant breakdown could lead to power outages.

In an advisory, the NGCP said the Visayas grid had an available capacity of 2,511 megawatts (MW) against a projected peak demand of 2,362 MW.

The grid had an operating margin of 149 MW, which was insufficient to meet the required contingency reserve.

The NGCP lifted at 7 p.m. on Friday the yellow alert for the Visayas grid which had been hoisted for more than two weeks.

The NGCP attributed the yellow alert to the unavailability of two large coal-fired power plants in the Visayas — Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) Unit 3 in Iloilo City and Kepco SPC (KSPC) Unit 1 in Naga, Cebu.

It also cited as a factor a scheduled maintenance of Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection Line 2.

READ: Visayas grid faces new yellow alert on Oct. 15

The grid operator reported that five power plants had been on forced outage since October, five since September, three since August, one since June, four since May, and three since 2025.

Two plants had been on forced outage since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021.

Another 16 power plants were operating at reduced capacities, leaving a total of 662.4 MW unavailable to the grid, the NGCP said. /apl