It was another round of ‘madness’ for millions of Filipino consumers before the strike of midnight on Thursday (May 23), as most parts of Luzon grid had been tormented with one to 1.5-hour rotational brownouts.

In the franchise area of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) alone, more than 487,000 customers had to grope in darkness and suffer sleepless nights because of scorching heat – as there were no air-conditioning or cooling systems they can rely on because of power service interruptions.

The affected subscribers of the power utility company are parts of Metro Manila, then Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, and Pampanga.

Meralco Vice President and Spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga indicated that at the thick of the rotational brownouts, “we have requested participants under the interruptible load program (ILP) to be on standby for possible de-loading to help ease the demand.”

For consumers in regional domains served by the electric cooperatives (ECs), it was reported that some areas suffered even up to 3-4 hours of rotational brownouts due to supply lack ignited by the simultaneous shutdown of power plants.

Based on data from system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), 21 plants have been on forced outages; while six (6) have reported de-rated (reduced) generation capacities.

Summary of Plant Outages and Capacity De-rating as of May 23, 2024

As conveyed by Meralco, when the power interruptions happened, many office buildings and commercial establishments were already closed, hence, demand could have already tapered off, yet available power capacity was still not enough to meet the needs of residential consumers.

It was already the second night in a row that brownouts had distressed consumers in Luzon, the first one was Wednesday (May 22) evening after the tripping of unit 1 of the Sual coal-fired power plant in Pangasinan, hence, losing additional 647 megawatts of capacity from the system.

Power plant operator Team Energy Philippines advised that the Sual facility was already synchronized back to the grid as of 11:37pm on Thursday (May 23).

According to industry stakeholders, last night’s brownout tragedy signals highly probable worse situation in the country’s power system, as no concrete solutions are being laid down yet by the government how to address the electricity supply mess that has been distressing mainly Luzon and Visayas grids for more than a month already.

Even the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is not that keen on cracking the whip on the habitually delinquent power plants that have been recurrently on forced outages – which in turn had been causing the rotational blackouts.

Penalty impositions

At the very least, Senate Committee on Energy Vice Chairman Sherwin Gatchalian has prodded the Department of Energy (DOE) and the ERC “to demonstrate determination by penalizing power-generating plants that may have breached the reliability index.”

In addition, he nudged the two key agencies in the sector to “rigorously investigate unplanned and forced outages.”

The lawmaker emphasized that “the continuing red and yellow alert status is a critical warning that we urgently need to increase capacity in the country to meet our economic growth targets.”

Gatchalian similarly called on the entire industry to “aggressively work towards the immediate resumption of operations of power-generating plants.”

He qualified that “restoring the operation of hydroelectric plants, cloud seeding must be initiated without delay,” while stressing that “industry stakeholders must collaborate intensively to increase ancillary services, mitigate the price impact on consumers due to plant outages, and expedite the addition of new capacity.”

In a statement on Thursday, the DOE plainly said that it is “closely monitoring and coordinating with the NGCP, generation companies and distribution utilities to ensure the availability of power supply in meeting the power demand in view of the declaration of red and yellow alert status in the Luzon and Visayas grids.”

The department similarly noted it is encouraging consumers “to continue minimizing power use during critical hours to help mitigate the impact of supply shortages,” specifying that “these initiatives are crucial in preventing power interruptions and ensuring continued power supply stability.”