By JEAN MANGALUZ, GMA News
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The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said the Visayas grid will be placed under Red Alert on Friday afternoon, while the Mindanao grid will be under Yellow Alert due to the unavailability of coal plants and outages affecting multiple plants.
For the Visayas Grid, the Red Alert will be effective from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. It will later be put under Yellow Alert from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., and then once more at 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., according to a Facebook post from the NGCP.
The available capacity is 2,407 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 2,558 MV.
The NGCP said eight plants are on forced outage on October, two plants since September, three plants since September, three plants since August, one plant since June, three plants since May, three plants since 2025, one plant since 2024, two plants since 2023, and one plant since 2021.
Meanwhile, 19 plants are running on derated capacities, leading to 606.6 MW being unavailable to the grid.
According to the NGCP, a factor that contributed to the red and yellow alert declaration was the unavailability of Visayas' large coal plants PEDC 3 and KSPC 1.
There were also limited power imports from Mindanao due to the planned outages of GNPK 4, TSI 2, and unplanned outages of TSI 1 and Pulangi 4 U2.
In a separate Facebook post, the Mindanao grid's Yellow Alert will be in effect from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. due to the planned outages of GNPK 4, and TSI 2, and unplanned outages of TSI 1, and Pulangi 4 U2.
There is an available capacity of 2,847 MW against a peak demand of 2,661 MW.
The NGCP said 11 plants have been on forced outage in October, one since September, two plants since August, two plants since July, one plant since June, two plants since January, one plant since 2025, and one plant since 2024.
Three plants running on derated capacities, for a total of 474.9 MW unavailable to the grid.
According to the NGCP, a red alert is raised when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid's regulating requirement. Meanwhile, a yellow alert is raised when the operating margin is unable to meet the transmission grid's contingency requirement. — VDV, GMA News