Visayas, Mindanao Grids Face Red Alerts Due to Plant Outages

MANILA, Philippines — Electricity supply in the Visayas and Mindanao is expected to fall below peak demand on Thursday, Sept. 3, as multiple generating units remain offline, putting both grids under red alert for nine hours. The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines said the Visayas grid will be on red alert from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., with yellow alerts from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Available capacity is estimated at 2,187 megawatts against projected peak demand of 2,575 MW, a gap of about 388 MW. Therma Visayas Inc. Unit 1 and Panay Energy Development Corp. Unit 3 remain on forced outage, while other unavailable and derated units have cut about 792 MW from the grid. Mindanao, meanwhile, will be under red alert from noon to 9 p.m. and yellow alert from 10 a.m. to noon and 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. The grid has about 2,480 MW available against projected peak demand of 2,546 MW, leaving a gap of about 66 MW. Among the units on forced outage are GNPower Kauswagan Units 1 and 2 and Therma South Inc. Unit 2. NGCP put total unavailable or reduced capacity in Mindanao at about 841.6 MW. A red alert means available capacity is insufficient to cover demand and required contingency reserves. Source: Philstar Business