The natural gas power plants of Prime CoreGen, a unit of Prime Infrastructure Capital Inc., were actively dispatched Wednesday to carry the load of unavailable facilities during the first red alert of 2026 in the Philippines.
The Department of Energy said Prime CoreGen natural gas plants ran at high capacity following the issuance of red alert notices by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), which led to rotating brownouts in some areas yesterday.
“PrimeCoreGen / First Gen natural gas plants were actively dispatched during the period. Sta. Rita and Ilijan units exhibited sustained high utilization, EERI units showed stable mid-to-high loading, San Gabriel operated at moderate levels, and Avion units remained at relatively low but consistent output levels,” Department of Energy Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara said.
The red alert was triggered by outages affecting several power plants, resulting in the unavailability of nearly 4,000 megawatts.
Prime CoreGen operates First Gen natural gas plants including the 1,000 MW Sta. Rita, 450 MW San Gabriel and 97 MW Avion after Prime Infrastructure acquired a majority stake in the facilities in 2025.
During the period, NGCP said the Luzon grid ran at an available capacity of 14,153 megawatts (MW) against a peak demand of 13,558 MW, resulting in an operating reserve margin of 595 MW. Aside from the unavailability of 48 power plants due to forced outages, 738.8 MW of capacity was also unavailable to the grid due to plants operating at “derated” levels.
NGCP placed the Luzon grid under yellow and red alerts from Wednesday afternoon to late evening. A red alert occurs when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirements. A yellow alert signifies that the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.
As NGCP placed the Luzon Grid under red alert, areas within the franchise area of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) experienced manual load dropping, or rotational power interruptions, lasting around 2 to 3 hours. As of 7:30 pm Wednesday, the red alert affected more than 920,000 customers in parts of Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Metro Manila and Rizal. More than 270,000 services have already been restored.
To lessen the strain on the grid, big-load customers of Meralco under the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) helped ease demand through de-loading of around 240 megawatt total capacity.
“Demand is high and we encourage energy conservation among consumers,” Guevara said.
