Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) began implementing a series of rotating power interruptions across Metro Manila and neighboring provinces on Thursday, May 14, as the Luzon grid struggled under severe generation deficits. 


The country’s largest power distributor announced the manual load dropping measures after the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the island’s main power artery under red and yellow alerts, indicating that reserves had fallen below safety margins.

The power strain stems from forced outages at several key power plants and the derated capacities of others, occurring simultaneously with a seasonal surge in electricity consumption.

To prevent a total system collapse, Meralco said the utility is rotating outages across its franchise area to manage the limited supply. These interruptions, which are currently scheduled to last until 10 p.m., are being deployed in stages to distribute the impact across various residential and commercial hubs.

The first wave of outages began shortly after 4 p.m., affecting a broad swathe of Metro Manila including Makati and Taguig, as well as Quezon City, Manila, and Pasay. Cavite was also included in this initial two-hour window.

As the evening peak approached, the outages expanded. Between 6:01 p.m. and 7 p.m., the interruptions moved into Marikina, Muntinlupa, and portions of Rizal province, as the grid operator sought to mitigate the deepening supply gap.

The situation is expected to remain critical through the mid-evening hours. Between 7:01 p.m. and 8 p.m., the rolling blackouts will extend to Silang and Tagaytay in Cavite, alongside areas in Laguna and Quezon Province.

Within Metro Manila, Caloocan and Pasig will see service disruptions during this period. The utility expects to continue these measures into the 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. window, maintaining the rotation across Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.

Meralco noted that the final hour of scheduled interruptions, ending at 10 p.m., will continue to affect various sectors of the Greater Manila Area.

While the utility has released this specific timetable, it cautioned that the schedule remains fluid. Service may be restored earlier or the outages may be extended depending on real-time changes in the Luzon grid’s available capacity and the performance of currently offline generating units.