The Visayas power grid will once again be placed under red and yellow alerts on Thursday, Oct. 29, due to the unavailability of major coal-fired power plants and limited electricity imports from Mindanao, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.
In an advisory, NGCP said a red alert would be in effect from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., while yellow alerts would be raised from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The grid operator said an available capacity of 2,408 megawatts (MW) against a projected peak demand of 2,555 MW, leaving a shortfall of 147 MW.
NGCP said 10 power plants were on forced outage in October, while other generating units had been unavailable since September, August, June and May. Several plants had also remained offline since 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2021.
Meanwhile, 18 power plants were operating at reduced capacities, bringing the total unavailable capacity to 796 MW.
NGCP cited the following factors behind the red and yellow alert declarations:
- Unavailability of Visayas' large coal plants TVI 1, TVI 2, and KSPC 1
- Limited power imports from the Mindanao grid, mainly due to the unavailability (planned outage) of GNPK 4 and TSI 2
A red alert is issued when the available power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirements.
A yellow alert, meanwhile, is declared when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the grid’s contingency requirements.
