THE Luzon Grid was placed under yellow alert as of 1:30 p.m. yesterday following the tripping of the 417.4 megawatts (MW) San Gabriel natural gas-fired power plant.
Yellow alert was raised in the Luzon Grid yesterday from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. as 21 power plant units were on either forced outage or de-rated with a total unavailable capacity of 1,652.7 MW.
Yellow alerts are issued when the level of power reserve in the grid is low but interruptions are not imminent.
According to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the alerts were raised as available capacity in the Luzon Grid was only 13,198 MW against a peak demand of 12,028 MW.
The Manila Electric Co. said it has advised its interruptible load program participants to be on standby in case the situation escalates to Red Alert. The DOE also assured Visayas and Mindanao grids are under normal condition.
Meanwhile, the DOE said power supply reliability in Bohol will significantly improve with the energization of the transmission connection between Bohol and Cebu by the NGCP on Tuesday.
DOE said NGCP has energized the Dumanjug-Corella 230 kiloVolt (kV) line 1 and the Dumanjug 70 megavolt amperes reactive substation, connecting Cebu to Bohol.
The agency said the facilities are capable of a 600 megawatts (MW) transfer capacity to increase supply reliability in the Bohol grid by providing direct access to bulk generations from Cebu, in addition to the existing Leyte-Bohol submarine cable.
Completion of the Bohol transmission project before the end of the year is expected to resolve congestion in the Leyte-Bohol 138 kV interconnection, which will unburden consumers from high electricity prices in the area.
Last week, NGCP also inaugurated the Hermosa-San Jose 500 kV transmission project which will significantly enhance power accessibility in the Luzon Grid with 5,080 MW coming from existing power plants and 2,554 MW that will come from committed power generation projects.
