Some customers within the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) franchise area may experience up to 2 hours of rotational power interruptions as the power distributor implements manual load dropping to manage the current red system condition in the Luzon grid.
The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) raised the red alert status for the Luzon grid from 1 pm to 12 am (June 2) and yellow alert from 11 am to 1 pm as total unavailable capacity reached 4,682 megawatts.
Meralco issued an advisory as of 2pm Saturday that among the affected areas are parts of Bulacan, Laguna, Cavite, Metro Manila, Rizal, Batangas and Quezon province at from 1pm to 5pm.
“We already requested our commercial and industrial customers to de-load to lessen the strain on the power grid,” Meralco spokesperson and head of corporate communications Joe Zaldarriaga said.
Zaldarriaga said that as of 2 pm Saturday, Meralco secured more than 200MW of de-loading capacity under the Interruptible Load Program (ILP).
“Given the challenging condition, we again urge the public to continue practicing energy conservation and efficiency measures. Rest assured that we continue to monitor and manage the situation and will provide updates as needed,” Zaldarriaga said.
The NGCP said available capacity reached 12,706MW versus peak demand of 11,955MW.
It said the raising of red and yellow alert intervals is due to the outage of Ilijan Block A & B (1,200MW) was due to liquefied fuel terminal restriction.
A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement.
A yellow alert is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
