Luzon, Metro Manila plunge into 2-hour rotating brownouts

Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon were plunged into two-hour rotating brownouts starting at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, with the power failure anticipated to last until the evening.

According to Manila Electric Company (Meralco), the first areas that suffered from power interruptions include Malolos in Bulacan, Tagaytay West, Imus and Bacoor in Cavite, and parts of Metro Manila, including Caloocan, Pandacan, and

Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said the rotating brownouts are being scheduled per block or every two hours for those affected with manual load dropping. The next brownout schedule was expected at 5 p.m. and the last at 9 p.m.

Earlier in the day, system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) projected power reserves falling to the level of negative 567 megawatts (MW) – and that raised brownout threats to the main power grid of the country and Metro Manila.

In the morning peak, NGCP projected that reserve will be at a negative 214 MW; and also negative 248 MW in the evening and was at its worst setting around noon time.

The peak demand for the day was seen hitting 10,832 MW and the available capacity in the system only hovered at 10,698 MW – entailing that there’s generation deficiency.

Power supply deficiency in the grid mirrored the rotating brownouts implemented in various parts of Luzon also on Wednesday (April 24) – wherein large swathe of Luzon and Metro Manila had suffered anew from the inconvenience of electricity service interruptions.

The Department of Energy (DOE) reported more forced outages in power plants after the strike of the 6.1 magnitude earthquake on Monday (April 22), then another temblor of 4.4 magnitude hitting Luzon anew on Wednesday (April 24) at dawn.

The power plants that are on unplanned outages are: the SMC coal-fired power facilities in Limay (units 1 and 2); the GNPower Mariveles plant (units 1 and 2) and unit 1 of the Pagbilao coalfired power plant.

Several generating facilities had also been on de-rated state or with strained generation capacity, including the unit 2 of the Calaca plant; the Pagbilao-3 power facility; the unit 1 of the Malaya thermal power plant and the Ambuklao-Binga hydroelectric power facility.

The combined unplanned outages and de-rating in electricity generation of power plants had resulted in a total loss of 1,911MW capacity in the country’s biggest power grid.

On Wednesday, NGCP also reported that it enforced manual load dropping (MLD) that resulted in power interruptions in Nueva Ecija, Albay, La Union, Camarines Sur, and Camarines Norte.