The Visayas grid will be placed under red and yellow alerts on Thursday, Oct. 22, due to the unavailability of large coal plants and limited power imports from Mindanao, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.
In an advisory, the red alert will be in effect from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., followed by a yellow alert from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
NGCP said the Visayas grid has an available capacity of 2,608 megawatts (MW) against peak demand of 2,581 MW.
A total of 599.1 MW is unavailable to the Visayas grid, with 21 plants on forced outage and another 21 operating at reduced capacity.
The grid operator said of the plants on forced outage, five have been offline since October, two since September, three since August, one since June and three since May. Three others have been offline since 2025, one since 2024, two since 2023 and one since 2021.
NGCP cited the following factors behind the red and yellow alert declarations:
- The unavailability of the Visayas’ large coal plants, PEDC 3 and KSPC 1.
- Limited power imports from Mindanao due to the planned outages of GNPK 4 and TSI 2 and the unplanned outage of Pulangi 4 Unit 2.
A red alert is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the grid’s regulating requirement.
Meanwhile, a yellow alert means the operating margin is insufficient to meet the grid’s contingency requirement.
