Yellow alert raised over Visayas grid

THE VISAYAS was placed under yellow alert for five hours on Tuesday following outages at a number of power plants, according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).

In an advisory, the NGCP said it raised the yellow alert over the Visayas grid between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Peak demand hit 2,351 megawatts (MW) while available capacity was 2,694 MW.

A total of 898.6 MW was unavailable to the grid as 16 power plants went on forced outage while 14 were running on derated capacity.

Contributing to the declaration of yellow alert was the unavailability of the 340-MW Toledo coal-fired power plant in Cebu.

The alert was also partly triggered by the emergency shutdown of Leyte Geothermal Power Plant Unit 3, bringing down the capacity of the facility from 79.5 MW to 39.3 MW.

The Luzon and Mindanao grids are normal, the NGCP said.

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