DOE to look into Luzon’s forced outages
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MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Energy (DOE) on Monday said it would verify the cause of the recent forced outages affecting several Luzon areas.
“We assure the public that the DOE is verifying the cause of the forced outages this morning as there appears to be no fuel supply constraints,” said Energy Sec. Raphael Lotilla in a statement.
“A team from the DOE will conduct actual physical spot checks and validate the condition of the transmission lines and the affected power plants,” he added.
This came after the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) placed Luzon under “red alert” from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. and yellow alert in intervals 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.
According to the DOE, a yellow alert is placed over the grid when reserves fall below ideal levels, while a red alert points to severe power deficiency that may lead to rotating power interruption.
DOE also said that it was informed by Meralco it had already advised its Interruptible Load Program (ILP) participants of possible manual load dropping.
ILP participants may then run their facilities to allow more grid capacity to serve other customers, DOE said.
