The Philippines' Visayas grid, one of the country's three major power grids, continues to face supply constraints after grid operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) issued a red alert on 14 September because of insufficient available generation capacity.
The Visayas grid is expected to have 1,963MW of available generation capacity today, according to NGCP's latest week-ahead forecast, which was issued on 14 September. An additional 250MW will be imported from Luzon through the Luzon-Visayas high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnection, while 50MW will be supplied from Mindanao, lifting total available supply to 2,263MW. This remains below forecast peak demand of 2,479MW, leaving a projected supply deficit of 216MW. NGCP expects the shortfall to persist through 18 September.
The deficit is largely the result of prolonged outages at several coal-fired generating units, according to NGCP. These include the two 170MW units at Therma Visayas' coal-fired power plant in Toledo, Cebu, which consumes at least 1.3mn t/yr of coal, and the 150MW unit 3 at Panay Energy Development Corporation's coal-fired plant in Iloilo City, which consumes around 600,000 t/yr of coal. The Panay unit had been expected to return to service in July, while Therma Visayas had targeted resuming commercial operations in the second half of August. Repair delays have extended outages at both facilities.
The Visayas grid has experienced more frequent red and yellow alerts in recent years as demand has risen while generation availability has been eroded by recurring plant outages. Around 980MW of capacity remains unavailable because of outages and derated operations, NGCP said. Baseload capacity additions are expected to remain limited, with only two coal-fired projects currently scheduled for commissioning: the 170MW expansion of the Therma Visayas plant in August 2028 and the 135MW Palm Concepcion power plant in December 2030.
By Antonio delos Reyes
