NGCP: Visayas grid to be under yellow alert anew on Tuesday afternoon, May 26

The Visayas grid will be under yellow alert status anew for six hours on Tuesday afternoon, as major coal plants in the region continue to be unavailable amid an increased system demand forecast.

In an advisory, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said the Visayas grid will be on yellow alert status — indicating that the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement — from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday.

This comes as the available capacity was recorded at 2,647 megawatts (MW) versus the peak demand of 2,493 MW, while a total of 892.25 MW remains unavailable to the grid.

The NGCP attributed the yellow alert declaration to the higher system demand forecast, and the continued forced outages of Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) 1, which has been out since May 12, 2026; TVI 2 since March 24, 2026; and Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) unit 2 since May 6, 2026.

In a separate advisory issued at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, NGCP said the yellow alert for the Visayas grid has been lifted at 9:30 p.m.

It said that the available capacity was 2,620 MW, higher than the demand of 2,370 MW.

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin, earlier this 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.”

A total of 12 plants have been on forced outage since May 2026, one since March 2026, three since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021, while 13 plants are running on lessened capacities.

“The Visayas (grid) has been on yellow alert mainly because down ‘yung mga PEDC, TVI. Kung makita ninyo (If you see), almost afternoon up to evening ‘yung kanilang yellow alerts,” Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) Market Operations Service director Sharon Montańer told reporters on the sidelines of the EJAP Energy Forum in Makati City.

Last week, 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. —AOL, GMA News