NGCP to implement rotating brownouts in Visayas

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) on Thursday said it will implement rotational brownouts across the Visayas as it raised red and yellow alerts in the island group’s power grid amid thinning reserves.

In an advisory, the NGCP said manual load dropping (MLD) or rotating power interruptions might be expecting in the following areas from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. “to maintain the integrity of the power system”:

• VECO
• MECO
• CEBECO I
• CEBECO II
• CEBECO III
• NEPC
• NOCECO
• NORECO I
• NORECO II
• NONECO
• MORE
• AKELCO
• ANTECO
• CAPELCO
• ILECO I
• ILECO II
• ILECO III
• GUIMELCO
• LEYECO II
• SOLECO
• DORELCO
• LEYECO III
• LEYECO IV
• LEYECO V
• ESAMELCO
• BILECO
• NORSAMELCO
• SAMELCO I
• SAMELCO II
• BLCI
• BOHECO I
• BOHECO II

The MLDs came after red alert was hoisted over the Visayas grid from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. to be followed by a yellow alert from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

The Visayas grid is operating at an available capacity of 2,377 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 2,552 MW as 12 plants are on forced outage since May 2026, one since March 2026, four since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, one since 2021, while 13 are running on derated capacities, for a total of 902.7 MW unavailable to the grid.

A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement.

A yellow alert is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.—RF, GMA News