Tight power supply in the Visayas has placed Tacloban City and the Leyte towns of Palo and Babatngon on alert, with the local electric cooperative warning consumers of possible service disruptions on Tuesday.
The Leyte II Electric Cooperative (Leyeco II) said the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Visayas Grid under red alert from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and yellow alert from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday.
The NGCP’s 8 a.m. update on Tuesday showed that the Visayas had 2,421 megawatts of available capacity against a projected peak demand of 2,570 MW, leaving a supply shortfall of about 149 MW during the peak period.
Leyeco II attributed the tight supply situation to the forced outage of several power plants and the reduced operating capacities of other generating facilities.
Forced outage
The NGCP reported that 10 power plants were on forced outage while 13 others were operating at reduced capacities, resulting in a combined 904.5 MW of unavailable capacity.
Among the factors cited by the NGCP were the unavailability of major coal-fired power plants in the Visayas, including TVI 1, TVI 2 and KSPC 1, as well as limited power imports from Mindanao.
Leyeco II warned that if the tight supply condition persisted and the NGCP directed the cooperative to reduce its load, it could implement manual load dropping (MLD), or the temporary disconnection of electricity in selected areas to reduce overall consumption.
The cooperative said any MLD would be implemented only when necessary and upon appropriate notice from the NGCP.
A red alert means available power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand. A yellow alert means the operating margin is insufficient to meet the grid’s contingency requirement