Visayas grid under red, yellow alerts on Wednesday - GMA Network

The Visayas grid will be placed under red and yellow alert status on Wednesday afternoon and evening, September 16 due to tight energy reserve, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

In an advisory, the red alert will take place at 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The yellow alert declaration, on the other hand, will be at 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The Visayas grid currently has an available capacity of 2,536 megawatts (MW) despite having a peak demand of 2,538 MW, the grid operator said.

The red and yellow alert status declarations were due to the unavailability of the Visayas' large coal plants - Therma Visayas Inc. Unit 1 and Panay Energy Development Corp. Unit 3.

The NGCP also cited the limited power import from the Mindanao grid.

Currently, there are eight plants on forced outage on September 3, three 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. Meanwhile, there are 15 plants running on derated capacities, for a total of 774.2 MW unavailable to the grid.

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. —VAL, GMA News