Following the shutdown of a power station last Jan. 17, the Department of Energy (DOE) said that Panay Island's electricity supply remained stable, and normal operations were resumed within a few hours.

In a statement, Energy Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan said that there are no rotational brownouts in Panay Island, except during the temporary cessation of operation of one power-plant.

"The situation now, as I mentioned earlier, is that our grid system is stable. We have ample supply with no shortages, and we monitor the situation every 30 minutes,” Marasigan said. “At times, Panay still exports electricity to Negros.”

The DOE clarification follows an advisory from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines about a potential power outage caused by "unresolved internal issues" at a plant that supplies electricity to Panay Island.

Marasigan said the problem was due to the outage of a specific plant, which had also been offline during the Jan, 2 incident.

“Therefore, to prevent a recurrence of a situation like Jan. 2, if one or two more plants encounter issues, an official advisory will be issued for manual or tripped operation,” the DOE official said.

Prior to the Jan. 17 incident, Marasigan said Panay has stable energy generation operation except on Jan. 2 where the region had high power demand resulting in prolonged blackout.

One of Panay’s big power generating plant encountered boiler tube leak last Jan. 17 — the Unit 3 of the Panay Energy Development Corp. with 150 megawatts capacity.

The system operator, NGCP, exerted efforts to  stabilize the situation by designating areas to make the necessary preparations in case there is the need for rotational brownout resulting from manual load dropping, the energy official said.

“The operation of other plants is ongoing, and as of this morning [Saturday], the electricity services are stable. However, our system operator always issues advisories in case of any eventualities in Panay Island or even in Negros,” Marasigan said.

“In such cases, it is possible for them to implement manual load shedding again,” he added.

Panay Island has more than 400 megawatts of power supply while the demand is around 420 megawatts, according to Marasigan. 

In terms of renewable energy contribution to the island, 20 megawatts come from wind energy, in addition to Guimaras wind power which generates about 50 megawatts. Some 8 megawatts of energy are sourced from hydro power generating facility, he added.