With array of factors which caused unavailability of 1,652 megawatts in the system, the tripping of the 417.4MW San Gabriel gas-fed power facility has prompted the declaration of ‘yellow alert’ condition in the Luzon grid.

In the context of the power industry, to be plunged into ‘yellow alert’ does not necessarily entail a scenario of probable power service disruptions, instead, it just signals decline in power reserves to a level that is below the requirement for prudent operation of the power system.

Owing to that, system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) raised yellow alert for Luzon grid from 3:00pm to 9:00pm on Wednesday (July 17).

As of press time, there was no information provided to the media yet on what caused the tripping of the San Gabriel plant and how soon it can be synchronized back to the grid.

Aside from the gas plant, the other facilities on forced shutdowns have been: Salangan hydro, Clean Green, MGC-Butao, Lafarge, Malaya unit 2, Pantabangan units 1 and 2, GFI plant, Masiway, Hypergreen, Limay unit 7, BT2020 Cogen, Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp unit 1,  and Calaca unit 1 generating facilities.

The available capacity for the country’s biggest power grid on Wednesday was at 13,198MW versus demand at 12,028MW - and that so far thinned out reserves to 1,170MW.

NGCP emphasized that one hydro plant had been on forced outage since last year; while eight other generating assets had been down from January to May; then\ six were out from the system within June to July this year.

The transmission firm further reported that six plants have been on derated capacities - which essentially contributed to the sudden downtrend in supply availability.

After the series of yellow and red alert conditions across grids throughout the summer months, this is the first recurrence of a yellow alert in Luzon following the onset of the rainy season.

This strike of ‘yellow alert’ incident, according to industry experts, is a clear signal of sustained tightness in power supply - given that the cooler temperatures had already eased overall demand.

Both the government and private sector players have been advancing project-developments that will address strained power supply in the country, but long-term fixes would need longer gestation period toward concretization.

Within the franchise are of Manila Electric Company (Meralco), company vice president Joe Zaldarriaga indicated that they will be advising their participants in the interruptible load program (ILP) in case the situation escalates into a red alert.