Red, yellow alerts hoisted over Luzon grid on Wednesday —NGCP

The Luzon power grid was placed under yellow and red alerts on Wednesday afternoon to evening due to forced outage of several power plants, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

At a press briefing, NGCP spokesperson Atty. Cynthia Alabanza announced that a yellow alert was raised from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. and was followed by a red alert from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. and another yellow alert from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

A yellow alert is declared when the reserve power in the grid becomes low. While supply is still enough to meet current demand, it no longer reaches the required safety margin.

At this level, the possibility of rotational power interruptions increases.

READ: What does each power alert level mean?

Meanwhile, a red alert is the highest alert level and is declared when the electricity supply is insufficient to meet demand since the reserves are depleted.

During this status, widespread power interruptions or rotational brownouts are expected as electricity is temporarily cut in certain areas on a scheduled basis to prevent the entire grid from collapsing.

The Luzoin grid is running at an available capacity of 14,153 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 13,558 MW, resulting in an operating reserve margin of 595 MW.

The NGCP said a total of 3,942.8 MW capacity were unavailable due to the forced outage of the following plants:

• Malaya U1 - 300 MW
• Hypergreen - 10 MW
• Malaya U2 - 130 MW
• Trust Biomass - 1.7 MW
• Matuno - 8.7 MW
• Sal-Angan - 2.4 MW
• Irisan U1 - 5.5 MW
• NMH U1 - 3.9 MW
• Bineng U1 - 19.8 MW
• Cleangreen U1 - 10.8 MW
• NIA U1 - 6 MW
• Lafarge U1 - 5.5 MW
• San Roque U2 - 145 MW
• MGC Butao - 1.3. MW
• Magat U4 - 97 MW
• VSGrip Biomass - 5.4 MW
• Binga U4 - 35 MW
• Magat U2 - 97 MW
• Botocan - 23 MW
• Masinloc U3 - 307.2 MW
• EERI U1 - 420.6 MW
• EERI U2 - 421.9 MW
• EERI U3 - 419.6 MW
• Ilijan A - 600 MW
• Ilijan B - 600 MW
• Bacman US - 20 MW
• Palayan Binary - 24 MW
• Binga U3 - 35 MW
• Casecnan U1 - 82.5 MW
• Smithbell U1 - 1.8 MW
• Barit - 1.8 MW
• Colasi - 4 MW
• Lower Labayat - 1.4 MW
• Tibag - 5.8 MW
• Upper Labayat - 3.5 MW
• Limay U8 - 90 MW

Moreover, a total of 738.8 MW capacity were also unavailable to the grid as the following plants operate on derated capacities:

• Sual U1 - 270 MW
• Tiwi - 14 MW
• Pagbilao U3 - 330 MW
• Makban A - 67 MW
• Tiwi C - 68 MW
• Makban B - 84 MW
• Makban E - 19 MW
• Masinloc U1 - 305 MW
• Masinloc U2 - 305 MW
• SCPC U1 - 120 MW
• Makban D - 26.5 MW
• GMEC U2 - 305 MW

In a separate statement, Meralco said it is monitoring the power situation following the declaration of red and yellow Alerts on the Luzon grid.

“We have already started coordinating with customers enrolled under the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) for their de-loading commitments to help ease the demand,” the power distributor said.

“If necessary, we are ready to implement manual load dropping (MLD) or rotating power interruptions as part of our responsibility to manage the system condition,” it said.

Meralco encouraged the public to practice energy efficiency to help in electricity demand-side management. —VAL, GMA News