Rotational brownouts expected in Metro Cebu on Wednesday

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Metro Cebu consumers may experience rotational brownouts lasting several hours after the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) placed the Visayas grid under red alert, and warned of possible Manual Load Dropping (MLD) on Wednesday, July 8, due to limited power supply.

In its latest advisory, NGCP said manual load dropping may be implemented from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. across several distribution utilities in the Visayas, including Visayan Electric (VECO), Mactan Electric Company (MECO), CEBECO I, CEBECO II, and CEBECO III, among others.

According to NGCP, the emergency measure is necessary because of limited generation in the Cebu-Negros-Panay sub-grids, with the schedule subject to cancellation should system conditions improve or electricity demand fall below projections.

READ: Yellow alert for Visayas grid for 3rd straight day

Here in Metro Cebu, Visayan Electric warned its customers of potential rotational brownouts to comply with NGCP’s required load reduction.

Portions of Cebu City, Mandaue City, the City of Naga, and Minglanilla have been identified for possible rotational outages from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., although the utility stressed that the schedule could change depending on actual grid conditions and further directives from NGCP.

READ: After 5 days of stability, Visayas power grid faces yellow alert anew

Among the areas that may be affected are Carreta, Tejero, Tinago, Mabolo, and San Roque in Cebu City; portions of Mandaue City, including the North Reclamation Area, Subangdako, Guizo, Tipolo, Ibabao-Estancia, Maguikay, Paknaan, and Tabok; several barangays in the City of Naga; and parts of Minglanilla, including Guindaruhan, Tunghaan, and Tungkop.

A Red Alert is declared when available operating reserves fall to a critical level, increasing the likelihood of power interruptions to prevent a wider collapse of the transmission system.

Wednesday’s power shortage followed a series of generation setbacks, including the tripping of the Iloilo-PEDC transmission line, which isolated the recently reactivated PEDC Unit 3.

The emergency shutdown of Palm Concepcion Power Corp. (PCPC) on July 8. The incidents significantly reduced available generation capacity across the Visayas grid.

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