DOE's Garin orders swift restoration of Visayas power plants amid yellow alert

Energy Secretary Sharon Garin has ordered the immediate restoration of three power plants in the Visayas on forced outage, following the declaration of a Yellow Alert in the region’s grid.

In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, the Department of Energy (DOE) said the directive to undertake restoration efforts covers Therma Visayas Inc. units 1 and 2, and Panay Energy Development Corp. unit 3, along with all concerned stakeholders.

Garin also instructed the DOE Visayas Field Office to inspect the three power plants and coordinate with the concerned generation companies to ensure that they are back online “safely and promptly.”

“The DOE assured the public that it is conducting enhanced monitoring and coordinating with generation companies, the system operator, and other concerned stakeholders to support the timely restoration of affected units, maintain grid reliability, and minimize further disruption,” the agency said.

The Visayas grid is on yellow alert status – indicating that the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement – from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

This comes as the available capacity was recorded at 2,684 megawatts versus the peak demand of 2,512 megawatts.

There have been 11 plants on forced outage since March 2026; four since 2025; two since 2024; two since 2023; and one plant out since 2021. Nine are running on derated capacities for a total of 833 megawatts unavailable to the grid. — JMA, GMA News