Luzon grid on yellow alert on Thursday

The Luzon grid will be placed on yellow alert again on Thursday, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said in an advisory.

NGCP said the Luzon grid will be placed on yellow alert from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. for having available peak capacity of 15,115 MW megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 13,818 MW.

According to the NGCP,  4 plants have been on forced outage since 2023, 3 between January and March 2024, and 13 since April 2024; while 1 other is running on derated capacity, for a total of 1369.3 MW unavailable to the grid.

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

The Department of Energy (DOE) earlier said the April 2024 unplanned outages in over 32 power plants was record-setting, with 1,811 megawatts of power lost, more than double the previous average of 700 megawatts lost in years 2019 to 2023.

Minority lawmakers in the House of Representatives are calling for a congressional inquiry into the red and yellow power alerts in Luzon and Visayas grids due to the unplanned outages of over 32 power plants. –VAL, GMA Integrated News