Visayas grid under yellow alert on August 23, 2026

The Visayas grid will be placed under yellow alert on Sunday evening, August 23 due to thin reserves as several power plants are unavailable, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

In an advisory, the NGCP said the yellow alert will be implemented from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The NGCP said that the grid only has an available capacity of 2,516 megawatts despite a peak demand of 2,292 megawatts.

It noted that among the factors for the declaration of yellow alert on the grid include unavailability of two large coal plants in the Visayas. There's also an emergency shutdown of a power plant of Kepco SPC Power Corporation on Saturday due to a suspected boiler tube leak.

The grid operator also said that eight power plants are on forced outage in August 2026, one plant since July, three plants since June, seven plants since May, one plant since March, three plants since 2025, two plants since 2024, two plants since 2023, and one plant since 2021.

Meanwhile, there are nine plants running on derated capacities, resulting to a total of 901.9 megawatts unavailable to the Visayas grid.

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