The Visayas Grid will be placed under red alert for six hours on Tuesday, August 18, due to insufficient power reserves, according to the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
Based on NGCP's 8 a.m. update, the red alert will be in effect from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. The grid will also be under yellow alert from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The Visayas Grid currently has an available capacity of 2,410 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 2,502 MW, resulting in a tight power supply situation.
NGCP said several power plants are currently unavailable or operating below their full capacity. Eight plants have been on forced outage since August, while others have been unavailable since previous months and years. These include one plant since July, three since June, seven since May, one since March, three since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021.
Meanwhile, 13 power plants are operating at derated or reduced capacities, resulting in a total of 836.9 MW of unavailable capacity in the Visayas Grid.
NGCP identified two major factors behind the declaration of the red and yellow alerts: the unavailability of the Visayas' large coal-fired power plants, TVI 1 and TVI 2, and the limited power import from Mindanao, which is primarily due to outages of coal plants and high system demand in the Mindanao Grid.
Under NGCP's guidelines, a red alert is declared when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand as well as the transmission grid's regulating requirement.
A yellow alert, meanwhile, is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid's contingency requirement.
The DOE said it is coordinating with NGCP, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), and the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) to expedite the restoration of affected power facilities.
The agency assured the public that it is taking measures to stabilize the Visayas Grid and protect the interests of electricity consumers.
