The Department of Energy (DOE) assures that Panay Island’s electricity supply is secure, and its standard operations have resumed within a few hours.

This came after the Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC) Unit 3 encountered issues last January 17, as the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) flagged a possible outage that was caused by persisting internal issues.

In a report by the Manila Bulletin, Energy Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan stressed that despite the interruption of one powerplant, there were no reports of electrical interruptions and that the situation is under control as the department monitored it every 30 minutes.

Furthermore, the DOE official said that should one or two more plants encounter issues, an advisory would be released for manual or tripped operation.

After the January 2 power trippings, Panay had stable energy operation until the January 17 incident, when the said plant encountered a boiler tube leak.

NGCP strived to steady the situation by assigning preparation areas should the rotational brownout occur from manual load dropping.

The power supply on Panay Island exceeded 400 megawatts (MW), surpassing the demand of roughly 420 MW.