MANILA, Philippines, March 6 ------ For the first time this year, the Luzon grid was placed under a yellow alert due to higher demand and forced outages of several power plants. The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said the Luzon grid was on yellow alert from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Meanwhile, the Visayas and Mindanao grids remained normal.
Unplanned outages of several power plants as well as the increase in the projected load to 11,829 megawatts from 11,325 MW were among the causes of the yellow alert. As of 5 p.m., the available capacity of the Luzon grid was only 12,488 MW. A yellow alert is raised when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
Eight plants have been on forced outages since February, while four others have been out since last year. Sixteen generation facilities are running on derated capacities, which resulted in 3,362.3 MW of unavailable capacity to the grid, the NGCP said. Power distributor Manila Electric Co. or Meralco said it was monitoring the situation following the alert declaration.
Source: philstar.com
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