Brownouts possible due to power demand, plant outages — DOE

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Monday said there is a possibility of brownouts due to the increasing power demand and the outages of power plants amid the El Niño phenomenon.

“How close are we to red alert, brownouts kapag meron tayong red alert? Well, there is a potential but as long as we have our contingency measures, maiiwasan pa rin natin,” DOE Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan said at a press conference.

(How close are we to red alert, brownouts when we have a red alert? Well, there is a potential but as long as we have our contingency measures, we can still avoid it.)

Marasigan said the DOE made adjustments as their projections happened earlier and the power demand already exceeded their expectations.

“Normally kasi yung peak demand natin towards the last week or end of May or June. But for this year, it’s not only that the peak highest demands happened for the year happened on April 24, this surpassed our projection by almost 100 megawatts,” he said.

(Normally, our peak demand is towards the last week or end of May or June. But for this year, it's not only that the peak highest demands for the year happened on April 24, this surpassed our projection by almost 100 megawatts.)

As of 1 p.m. on Monday, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) “yellow alert”” over the Luzon grid from 2 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Yellow alert is also raised in Visayas grid from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

“The extension of yellow alert in Luzon and declaration of yellow alert in Visayas is due to increase in forecasted demand.” the NGCP said.

“EDC-Leyte A Maha Unit 1 (160MW) also went on unplanned outage at 10:23AM, while power shared through the Mindanao-Visayas interconnection also decreased with the deration of GNPK 4 from 115MW to 61MW,” it added.

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