NGCP issues red alert notice, indicates rotating brownouts in Luzon

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines on Friday issued a "red alert" notice to its customers in the Luzon grid, citing the unplanned outages of some power plants.

In a news release on its website, the NGCP said the available capacity during the peak hours from 2 to 4 p.m. stood at 8,139 megawatts, compared to a projected demand of 8,403 megawatts.

Because of this, it said rotating brownouts in Luzon may be expected Friday "because of the generation-related deficiency."

"The unavailability and/or the reduced capability of certain power plants led to this situation where contingency reserve is zero because of a generation deficiency," it said.

NGCP added the specific affected areas and the duration and schedule of brownouts per area will be determined by the local distribution utility.

It said the supply situation may normalize "once the unavailable capacities or the plants on shutdown or running on limited capabilities are back and synchronized to the grid, or once the demand recedes."

Earlier Friday, the Manila Electric Co. said it may implement brownouts in parts of Metro Manila due to the emergency shutdown of its plant in Pagbilao, Quezon.

A separate report on GMA News TV's "Balita Pilipinas Ngayon" said Unit 2 of Sual Power Plant in Pangasinan went offline.

The NGCP said it is its obligation under the law and its franchise to ensure that the grid operates at an optimum level "with due consideration for safety, security and reliability."

It added it is "closely monitoring the situation and continues to be in close coordination with the Department of Energy (DOE) to ensure that all the capacities available to the grid are dispatched efficiently."

It also maintained that while it does not control power supply, "during periods of generation deficiency, it does its best to mitigate the situation by implementing the grid-wide power load curtailment to maintain the grid’s security and reliability."

Under NGCP's system, a red alert condition exists when the contingency reserve is zero or a generation deficiency exists.

A “Yellow alert” is a system condition where the total of all reserves is less than the capacity of the largest plant online. For the Luzon grid, this is 647 MW.

A normal condition exists when system reserves are more than sufficient to meet the reserve requirements of the grid. — Joel Locsin /LBG, GMA News