Power outages hit Panay, Negros anew

March 3, 2024 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — Parts of Panay and Negros islands were plunged into darkness anew on Friday night as power plants went on forced outages.

In an advisory, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said the power outages were caused by an unplanned shutdown of three units of the Panay Energy Development Corp. with a combined capacity of 316 megawatts.

The NGCP said the shutdown was followed by the tripping of other power plants in Panay.

Power was restored in affected areas in Panay starting at 12:26 a.m. yesterday.

In Negros, the Central Negros Electric Cooperative Inc. announced that power was fully restored at 2 p.m. yesterday in areas connected to affected feeders.

The NGCP said 167.9 MW are being served by Panay power plants and augmented by 102.4 MW from sources elsewhere in the Visayas.

The NGCP gave assurance that the blackouts were not caused by the tripping of any of its facilities.

A fire occurred near a transmission line, but the NGCP said it was 15 meters away from the power line.

In January, a region-wide power outage hit Western Visayas.

Panay and Guimaras experienced a four-day power outage that severely affected residents and commercial establishments.