Visayas, Mindanao grids under red, yellow alert on Sept. 9, 2026

The Visayas and Mindanao grids will be placed under yellow alert on Wednesday, September 9, due to the unavailability of some coal plants, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

In an advisory, the red alert will be declared on the Visayas grid from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The yellow alert in the Visayas grid, on the other hand, will take place from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

For the Mindanao grid, a red alert will be in effect from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

A yellow alert status will likewise be in effect from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The NGCP said the Visayas grid only has an available capacity of 2,124 megawatts (MW) amid a peak demand of 2,555 MW.

The grid operator cited the unavailability of Visayas’ large coal plants Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) Unit 1 and Panay Energy and Development Corporation Unit 3.

There was also an outage of TVI Unit 2 earlier in the day and limited power import from the Mindanao grid.

Moreover, 11 plants are on forced outage in September, four plants since August, one plant since July, two plants since June, seven plants since May, three plants since 2025, two plants since 2024, two plants since 2023, and one plant since 2021. There are also 13 plants are running on derated capacities, for a total of 982.6 MW unavailable to the grid.

For Mindanao, the declaration of red and yellow alert statuses was due to the deration of TM2 and a decrease in the available generating capacity of diesel and hydroelectric plants in the region.

The NGCP said the Mindanao grid had an available capacity of 2,641 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 2,591 MW.

Moreover, the NGCP said 15 plants were on forced outage as of September 2026—seven since August, four since July, one since June, two since January, one since 2025, and one since 2024. Eight other plants were operating at derated capacities, bringing the total unavailable capacity to 827.7 MW.

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. — VDV/VAL/VBL, GMA News