Visayas grid to be under yellow alert status anew Thursday afternoon

The Visayas grid will be on yellow alert anew for five hours starting Thursday afternoon, as major coal plants in the region continue to be unavailable while demand remains high, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

The yellow alert status — indicating that the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement — will be in place from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, June 25.

The grid’s available capacity was recorded at 2,504 megawatts (MW), against a peak demand of 2,358 MW, as a total of 1,030.5 MW remain unavailable to the grid.


The NGCP attributed the declaration to the continued outage of Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) 1, TVI 2, and Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) unit 2.

Ten plants have been on forced outage this month, eight since May, one since March, three since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2026, while 16 are running on derated capacities.

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin last month already ordered the immediate restoration of the three power plants, and instructed the Visayas Field Office to inspect and coordinate with the concerned generation companies to ensure that they are back online “safely and promptly.”

The Department of Energy (DOE) said that while there is no direct correlation between the declaration of yellow and red alerts on electricity rates, the thin power supply forced the use of more expensive diesel power plants, which could slightly raise power costs. —VAL, GMA News