First yellow alert raised in Luzon

A YELLOW ALERT was raised over the Luzon grid on Wednesday amid higher forecasted demand and power plants that were on forced outages, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

In an advisory, the NGCP said that the Luzon grid was placed on yellow alert between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Peak demand hit 11,829 megawatts (MW) against the available capacity of 12,488 MW.

A total of 3,362.3 MW was unavailable to the grid as 12 power plants have been on forced outage and 16 plants are running on derated capacities.

NGCP attributed the declaration of yellow alert to the increase in forecasted demand from 11,325 MW in the morning to 11,829 in the afternoon. The grid operator also noted the significant number of power plants on un-planned or forced outages.

A yellow alert is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.

The Visayas and Mindanao grids, on the other hand, are under normal conditions.

Last year, the Philippines was placed under 16 red alerts and 62 yellow alerts which led to brownouts and power interruptions.