TGIF is not something that electricity consumers in the Luzon grid can happily look forward to, as they will have to close the week agonizing over new threats of rotational blackouts with Luzon grid being placed on ‘red alert’ for the third time this week.

On Friday morning, system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) conveyed that the country’s biggest power grid would be on red alert from 3:00-4:00pm; then 6:00 to 10:00pm.

Yellow alert, which signifies the insufficiency of power reserves in Luzon, had also been raised from 12:00 to 3:00pm; 4:00 to 6:00pm then from 10:00 to 11:00pm.

NGCP reiterated that 19 power plants remained on forced outages; while three others have reduced (de-rated) capacities; and the unavailable capacity in the system got even heftier at 2,284.3MW from 1,800MW in the last two red alerts on Tuesday (April 16) and Thursday (April 18).

Industry players emphasized that the Malaya thermal and Kalayaan hydro power plants have just been added to the growing list of forced outages in generating units.

Visayas grid also remained on a frustrating situation with its electricity supply crossing over yellow alerts by 12:00 to 4:00pm; then at 5:00 to 8:00pm, as 15 plants sited in the grid were still on unscheduled downtimes aggravated by the de-rated capacity of 10 other generating units.

NGCP data showed extreme tightness in supply – especially for Luzon grid, with peak demand of 13,127 megawatts almost gobbling up projected available capacity at 13,594MW; while Visayas peak demand hovers at 2,445MW versus available capacity of 2,614MW.

All through this mess in the power system, it has been the interruptible load program (ILP) that has been saving Luzon grid from crumbling. But since the generating sets (gensets) of big-ticket consumers generally rely on diesel fuel, that will essentially rain blows on the country’s decarbonization pathway.

ERC to probe plant outages

As anxiety mounts over this continuing desperate situation in the country’s power supply, no one in the government has sounded off plans yet to crack the whip on the faltering operations of the generation companies – despite the double whammy of uncertain electricity services and rate hikes that this vulnerable situation will be inflicting not just on the individual consumers but on the Philippine economy in general.

At the very least, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) just plainly stated that it is “closely monitoring and evaluating reports from the NGCP and certain generation companies that went on outage;” and will eventually decide on a probe process based on outcome of initial findings.

ERC Chairperson Monalisa C. Dimalanta said “based on our findings, we will formalize the investigation to determine compliance or non-compliance by the relevant stakeholders and implement appropriate measures to impose penalties on any lapses and address issues that may have contributed to the adverse situation.”

At this stage, the ERC indicated “we collate information and review the reports from the affected stakeholders to come up with a preliminary analysis of the cause or causes of the incidents.”

Based on its mandate, the ERC noted it will “review the performance of stakeholders concerned to ensure compliance with reporting requirements, maintenance and technical standards, as well as observance of allowable outage limitations.”

The Commission added that the priority for now would be the restoration of the plants that almost simultaneously bogged just within the stretch of one week.

“The ERC continues to monitor the status of capacity restoration, coordinating with the Department of Energy (DOE), the generation companies and NGCP,” it stressed.