The Department of Energy (DOE) is seeing a number of possible yellow alerts in the Luzon grid in the remaining months of the year.
In a report by the Philippine Star, Energy Undersecretary Rowena Guevara stated that there is still a possibility of four yellow alerts in Luzon due to the El Niño occurrence.
Guevara added that one of the hydroelectric stations in Luzon saw a capacity decline of 70%.
As for the Mindanao Grid, no yellow alerts are seen. For the Visayas Grid, yellow alerts are likely during the evenings.
A yellow alert is issued when there’s insufficient power margin to meet the grid’s regulation needs though this does not automatically result in outages.
A red alert is raised when the power supply fails to meet these requirements, leading to scheduled power interruptions.
Last October 1, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) experienced a disruption that affected the San Jose-Nagsaag 500-kilovolt (kV) transmission line 2 and multiple power plants in Luzon which led to an automatic load dropping (ALD).
This incident also affected 850,000 customers of the Manila Electric Company (MERALCO) in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Laguna, Batangas, Cavite, Rizal, Quezon, and Pampanga who experienced interruptions that lasted hours.