The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) again raised a yellow alert over Negros and the rest of the Visayas on Wednesday, April 17, with the number of power plants on forced outage having increased to 13.
An NGCP advisory said 13 power plants in the Visayas are on forced outage, while five others were running on derated capacities for a total of 698 MW unavailable to the grid, the NGCP announced.
The yellow alert, which is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement, was scheduled from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday.
Michelle Visera, NGCP spokesperson, said forced outage means unplanned shutdowns by power plants, while derated capacities are when a power plant produces less than its full capacity.
WORRISOME
“These red and yellow warnings have not affected local businesses yet but are worrisome. They might divert power from Visayas to Luzon where red and yellow alerts have also been raised, which has been done in the past,” Frank Carbon, Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry vice president for government affairs, said.
Carbon, who is also Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry power and energy committee co-chair, asked what happened to the big announcement that the new submarine cable of NGCP would enable the transfer of excess power from Mindanao to the Visayas.
“Everybody was cheering when the announcement was made but now that we need power, where is it?” he asked.
NGCP president Anthony Almeda said on April 8 that aside from the new P67.98 billion Cebu-Negros-Panay 230kV Backbone submarine cable, NGCP has also successfully energized its Mindanao-Visayas Interconnection.
Carbon also asked if the power cooperatives in Negros are ready to implement their Interruptible Load Programs (ILP) where companies with stand-by generation capacities will be asked to use their generators to prevent rotating brownouts when there is a shortage of power.
Participating companies will be compensated under this program should they use their own generating facilities during instances of power supply deficit, he said.
On Tuesday yellow and red alerts were also raised over the Visayas with a warning of manual load dropping or rotational power interruptions but were lifted later in the evening.
A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement, NGCP said.
However, on Wednesday morning a yellow alert was again raised over the Visayas with a 13th power plant on forced outage.*