The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Luzon grid on red and yellow alerts for several hours on Monday as around 4,497.3 megawatts (MW) of capacity are unavailable to the grid due to the typhoon “Aghon.”
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said it advised customers enrolled in the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) for their de-loading commitments to help ease the demand in the Luzon grid amid the red and yellow alerts.
“If necessary, we are ready to implement manual load dropping (MLD) or rotational power interruptions as part of our responsibility to manage the system,” Meralco spokesperson and corporate communications head Joe Zaldarriaga said.
Meralco is also reminding the public to continue practicing energy efficiency to help in demand-side management.
NGCP placed the Luzon grid on red alert from 4 PM to 10 PM and yellow alert from 1 PM to 4 PM and 10 PM to 11 PM as available capacity was placed at 12,326 MW compared to the peak demand of 11,455MW.
NGCP said three plants have been on forced outage since 2023, two between January and March 2024, and 15 power plants between April and May 2024; while three are running on derated capacities, for a total of 4,497.3MW unavailable to the grid.
It said several factors contributed to the raising of red and yellow alert, particularly the forced outage of power plants due to typhoon ‘Aghon’ namely the Ilijan natural gas plant (600 MW), Pagbilao coal plant 1 (382 MW), Pagbilao 2 (382 MW), and Pagbilao 3 (420MW), San Buenaventura Power Ltd. coal plant (455 MW).
NGCP said some power plants are also on forced outage such as Masinloc 3 (335 MW) due to boiler feed water trouble and Quezon Power Philippines Ltd.’s coal plant (460 MW) due to broken spring support of turbine combine reheat valve.
Coal-fired power plants are also derated such as Sual 1, Calaca 2, Masinloc 1.
NGCP said the Visayas and Mindanao grids are in normal condition.
A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement while a yellow alert is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.