MANILA, Philippines, April 17 ------ With several power plants either offline or operating at reduced capacity, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Luzon and Visayas grids on red and yellow alert status. Under red alert status, power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the grid’s regulating requirement. Yellow alert is raised when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
The NGCP said the situation might require manual load dropping (MLD). The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said it was ready to implement rotating power interruptions. In a statement, the NGCP said it put the Luzon grid under red alert from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m., later extended until 11 p.m. Yellow alert was up from 1 to 2 p.m., 4 to 6 p.m. and 9 to 11 p.m. The Visayas grid was on yellow alert from 2 to 4 p.m., 6 to 7 p.m. and extended until 9 p.m. as 12 power plants went on forced outage and five running on a limited capacity. In its statement, the NGCP said 19 power plants in Luzon were on forced outage and three operating on derated capacities. The situation translated to unavailability to the grid of 2,117.3 megawatts.
Peak demand in Luzon was 13,024 MW as against available capacity of 13,537 MW, while in the Visayas, peak demand was 2,440 MW vis-à-vis available capacity of 2,742 MW.
Marcos: Address power issues
President Marcos directed the monitoring of the country’s power situation and the adoption of conservation measures as alert levels were raised in the Luzon grid due to supply issues. “In light of the recent red and yellow alerts in the Luzon grid, I have instructed the Department of Energy to closely monitor and coordinate with all stakeholders to address the situation,” Marcos said in an X post yesterday. ‘I have also directed all government offices to set the standard in conserving energy and minimizing power consumption,” he added. The President said it is “crucial” for everyone to work together to ensure a stable power supply for the next couple of days. “Let’s adopt energy-efficient practices and stand together to overcome this challenge,” he added.
Meralco said it is “ready in the event the implementation of manual load dropping or rotating power interruptions will be needed as part of our responsibility to manage the system.” Parts of Metro Manila, Rizal Province, Laguna, Batangas and other neighboring municipalities have tentative schedules for MLD. However, in an afternoon update, Meralco said so far it “did not resort to any (MLD) or rotating power interruptions.” “This is partly due to the help of our big-load customers, which collectively de-loaded around 300 megawatts under the interruptible load program (ILP),” Meralco said.
Meralco said in March that 105 companies expressed commitment to participate in the program. The forced outage of power plants in Luzon and the Visayas resulted in power loss of 1,811.3 MW and 414.9 MW, respectively.
Source: philstar.com