The entire Visayas grid was once again placed under yellow alert today as several major power plants in the region remain non-operational. This comes despite the Department of Energy's policy against plant shutdowns during the summer season.

"To be transparent, the plants that are not available for Visayas is the large plant in Cebu that we call it TVI. May problema sila sa planta na kino-correct nila. Dalawang 169 megawatts sa Cebu. And then sa Panay, may tinawag tayong planta na PEDC, 150 megawatts. Ang out gyud natu sa Visayas is 845 megawatts, daku na kaayu na," said Engr. Neil Martin Modina, Assistant Vice President and Head of Visayas System Operations of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP). 

(To be transparent, the plants that are not available for Visayas include the large plant in Cebu that we call TVI. They have a problem with the plant which they are correcting. That's two units of 169 megawatts in Cebu. And then in Panay, there's a plant we call PEDC, 150 megawatts. Our outage in Visayas is 845 megawatts, which is already very significant.)

In an advisory released by the NGCP this morning, the Visayas grid was placed under yellow alert from 3PM to 9PM. 

According to the NGCP, aside from the high electricity consumption due to the hot weather, the forced outage of several major plants in the region is also having a significant impact.

An estimated 845 megawatts have been deducted from the Visayas grid's power supply due to the non-operation of plants in Cebu and Panay.

Modina noted that the affected facilities include major coal plants in Cebu and one plant in Panay currently undergoing repair.

Although the plants had already conducted maintenance before the onset of summer, defects were reportedly discovered after inspection, prompting the implementation of a force outage.

The NGCP added that the Department of Energy (DOE) has a policy to avoid maintenance shutdowns of plants during the summer season, but unforeseen problems must still be considered for the safety of operations.

"Ang policy sa DOE, gihatag ni nga policy nga wa gyuy mag-shut down og planta og summer. Pero gi-cut off gud na sya nga 1st quarter ra gyud ang shut down sa mga planta. Tanang planta i-require gyud na nga way maintenance karung summer. Karun ang nahitabo paghuman og maintenance sa planta, naa silay nakita, ingun sa plant manager I-RCA pa nila, root cause analysis. Mao na sya nigamay ang atung output sa mga planta kay dili man sila available," the NGCP official explained. 

(The DOE policy states that no plant should shut down during summer. It was set such that the shutdown of plants is limited to the 1st quarter only. All plants are required to have no maintenance during summer. What happened now is that after the maintenance of the plant, they saw something — the plant manager said they still need to conduct a root cause analysis or RCA. That's why our output from the plants has decreased because they are not available.)

Because of this, the NGCP is not ruling out the possibility of rotational brownouts should the power supply shortage in Visayas continue.

Nevertheless, the power supply coming from Mindanao is reportedly providing a big help in filling the gap in the Visayas grid.

"Si Mindanao na naay surplus of power, nag-supply na natu og 450 megawatts daily. Kung atung tan-awn, walay supply ni Mindanao, musamot ta'g ka-deficient. Mao na'y atung nindut nga nabuhat sa NGCP, gi-connect natu ang Mindanao which is surplus of power," he added. 

(Mindanao currently has a surplus of power, supplying us 450 megawatts daily. If we look at it, without Mindanao's supply, we would be even more deficient. That's the good thing NGCP was able to do — we connected Mindanao, which has a surplus of power.)

The affected major plants are expected to return to operation by July and August, which will help augment the power supply in the region.