While weekends are sacred respite for most families or households, consumers in Luzon cannot rest easy because they can be stricken with the malady of rotational power service interruptions anytime this Saturday following the declaration of new wave of ‘red alert’ in the grid.

According to system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the simultaneous outages of power plants and the de-rating of others took out close to 4,500 megawatts of capacity from the country’s biggest power grid.

Red alert, or extreme insufficiency of power reserves that can descend the grid anytime on rotational brownouts, had been raised from 2:00pm to 12:00 midnight; while yellow alert had been on from 12:00 noon to 1:00pm on Saturday (June 1).

The power plants that were on unplanned shutdowns had been those of Bataan, Salangan, Clean Green, National Irrigation Administration (NIA) facility, Lafarge, Malaya 2, Pantabangan Units 1 and 2, Quezon Power, Pagbilao units 1 and 2, Avion unit 2, Limay unit 7, Santa Rita module 20, Angat, Kalayaan Units 1 and 3; and Ilijan Blocks A and B.

Additionally, the generating assets with de-rated or reduced capacities had been those of Masinloc units 1, 2 and 3, Limay unit 8, GNPower Dinginin unit 2 and Sual unit 1.

From the forced downtimes of power plants, the grid operator indicated that 3,822MW of supply had been lost from the system; then that was aggravated by additional 642MW capacity decline due to the de-rated generation of other facilities.

Typically, weekends are low consumption days because most offices and buildings are closed but it is already manifest that the country is in the throes of another round of power crisis –that is if immediate solutions cannot be set in place by the government and the relevant industry players.

There were also instances when brownouts have been knocking like at theft at midnight – especially when big capacity generating units would hit breaking points.

Given the very desperate power situation in the country, some of the industry players are already pushing for the lifting of the coal moratorium that was enforced by the Duterte administration in 2020.

Nevertheless, the power project-sponsors will need to find their way with funding as most local and global banks have already given firm commitment that they will no longer finance new coal-fired power projects as they cannot continue supporting new assets that will further fry the planet.

The future energy development direction being set by the Marcos administration is one that will be leaning on renewables, hence, it remains to be seen if the policy of the Department of Energy (DOE) will firmly stand on that ledge or it will backpedal to immediately solve a threatening crisis.