Power Alerts Hit Luzon, Visayas as Brownouts Return

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Parts of Luzon and the Visayas experienced rotating brownouts following outages at power plants and transmission lines, prompting the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to declare red alerts over both regions this week.

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The NGCP issued a red alert for the Luzon grid from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, with yellow alerts given from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., and again from 10 p.m. to midnight. The region's available capacity of 12,464 MW struggled against a peak demand of 12,877 MW. In the Visayas, a red alert covered the same 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. window, and a yellow alert was from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. There, capacity was 2,377 MW, falling short of the peak demand of 2,552 MW.

A yellow alert indicates a drop in the grid's spare electricity supply below safe levels, while a red alert signifies inadequate supply to meet demand, leading to enforced power cuts. The manual load dropping (MLD) protocol was activated, affecting more than 200,000 Meralco customers in parts of Metro Manila and nearby provinces, with power cut for an average of three hours.

Demand peaks typically occur around 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 7 p.m., putting extra stress on the grid. Recent power shortages were triggered by failures in the 500-kilovolt Tayabas-Ilijan and Dasmariñas-Ilijan transmission lines, according to the Department of Energy.

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  Adapted by ASEAN Now · Philstar · 14 May 2026