Visayas grid placed under red alert for 2nd day

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Residents and consumers in Cebu should prepare for potential brownouts on Thursday evening, July 9, as grid operators issued yellow and red alerts for the Visayas due to multiple plant outages and high demand.

In its latest advisory, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has issued red alert which will take effect from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

This is the second consecutive day that the already-strained Visayas grid has been placed under red alert.

Meanwhile, yellow alerts had been declared for the hours before and after — 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

READ MORE: Rotational brownouts expected in Metro Cebu on Wednesday

NGCP placed available capacity at 2,561 megawatts against a peak demand forecast of 2,568 MW, a shortfall that triggered the red alert.

A red alert signals that power supply cannot meet both consumer demand and the grid’s contingency reserve requirements, while a yellow alert reflects a thinner operating margin that leaves the system vulnerable to sudden disruptions.

Grid operators pointed to three main drivers behind the tight supply outlook: the continued unavailability of the Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) coal-fired units 1 and 2, a recent forced outage at the 135-MW Panay Coal Power Corp. (PCPC) plant, and a higher-than-usual demand forecast for the day.

READ: Visayas grid slips back into red alert

The supply crunch still reflects a wider pattern of aging and underperforming baseload capacity across the region.

NGCP’s advisory listed 10 plants on forced outage since July, four since June, seven since May, one since March, three since 2025, three since 2024, two since 2023, and one plant that has remained offline since 2021.

An additional 14 plants are running at derated capacities. In total, 959.3 MW of generating capacity — an amount that alone exceeds the day’s supply deficit many times over — remains unavailable to the grid.

READ: EXPLAINER: Color-coded grid alert statuses and what they mean

The prolonged outages of large coal units such as TVI 1 and 2 underscore long-standing concerns about the reliability of Visayas’ baseload fleet, which utilities rely on for steady, round-the-clock dispatchable power.

When large coal or geothermal units go offline unexpectedly, grid operators are forced to lean more heavily on smaller, faster-responding but often costlier plants to fill the gap.

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