Consumers across the Visayas are once again bearing the brunt of a tight power supply as technical problems at several generating plants continue to trigger red and yellow alerts and force manual load tripping in some areas, including Iloilo.
For households, businesses and other electricity users, the recurring interruptions mean more than inconvenience. Unstable power can disrupt work, classes, business operations and essential services, particularly when outages occur without much warning.
Regan Alcantara, lead specialist of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), said several power plants in the Visayas have encountered technical problems, reducing the electricity available to the grid.
The shortage has prompted the implementation of manual load dropping, which temporarily disconnects portions of the distribution system to prevent a more serious disturbance across the grid.
Iloilo has been among the areas affected, with consumers reporting power interruptions in recent days.
The situation became particularly critical on September 3, when the Visayas Grid was placed under yellow and red alerts for a combined 13 hours.
NGCP’s Power Situation Outlook showed that the Visayas had only 2,336 megawatts (MW) of available generating capacity against a projected peak demand of 2,395 MW, leaving a 59-MW supply deficit.
The figures stand in sharp contrast to the situation in Luzon and Mindanao.
Luzon had 17,000 MW of available capacity against a peak demand of 11,307 MW, leaving an operating margin of 5,693 MW. Mindanao, meanwhile, had 2,731 MW of available capacity against 2,603 MW of demand, leaving a 128-MW margin.
The numbers highlight the vulnerability of the Visayas Grid when generating units become unavailable: the region’s available supply can quickly fall below demand.
For consumers, the immediate question is not simply why a grid alert has been declared, but how long they will have to endure interruptions and what is being done to prevent the same problem from recurring.
The NGCP continues to monitor the grid while affected generating facilities work to address their technical problems.
The return of unavailable generating units to service is expected to be critical in easing the supply shortage and reducing the need for manual load tripping.
But beyond restoring power after an outage, the recurring alerts underscore a bigger public-interest concern: whether the Visayas has enough dependable generating capacity and adequate safeguards to keep electricity flowing when individual power plants encounter technical failures.
Until more generating capacity becomes available, consumers remain vulnerable to the consequences of a power system operating with little room for error.IMT
