Visayas grid to be under yellow alert status anew Saturday afternoon

The Visayas grid will be on yellow alert anew on Saturday 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 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 27.

The grid’s available capacity was recorded at 2,555 megawatts (MW), against a peak demand of 2,372 MW, as a total of 979 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 3 while it forecast an increase in demand.

Fourteen 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 2021, while 13 are running on derated capacities, for a total of 979MW unavailable to the grid.

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