Tight power supply haunts Visayas, Mindanao on Aug. 14

MANILA, Philippines — The power supply in the Visayas and Mindanao grids remains limited, leading the grid operator to issue alerts on Friday.

In separate advisories, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said the Visayas would be under red alert anew for four hours, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

READ: Visayas power woes highlight need for gridwide upgrade

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Likewise, the grid operator will raise a yellow alert from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.

At 8 a.m., the available capacity stood low at 2,269 megawatts (MW), while peak demand reached 2,511 MW.

Outages at major coal plants and limited imports from Mindanao triggered the fresh power alerts.

In another advisory, the grid operator said Mindanao would also be under a yellow alert from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

In a yellow alert, the power supply can still meet demand, but it will serve as a warning that when a plant breaks down one way or another, it will result in brownouts. A red alert signals that the demand for power exceeds the supply, raising the risk of rotational brownouts unless we reduce demand. /pai