Power outages affected parts of Luzon on Monday following problems at a power plant in Masinloc, Zambales, the Philippines’ grid operator said. 

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines has put the Luzon grid on red alert after a transmission line and 2 units of Masinloc Power Plant tripped off at past 1 p.m. today affecting the Luzon grid. 

The red alert will last from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. A yellow alert has also been issued from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

“A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement,” the NGCP said.

“A yellow alert is issued when the operating margin is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s regulating and contingency requirement.”

While the available capacity of the Luzon grid is at 12,186 megawatts, the peak demand is estimated to be 12,468MW, the NGCP said.

It said 5 power plants are on forced outage, while 3 others are running on derated capacities, for a total of 1,354MW unavailable to the grid.

“Manual load dropping ongoing. Some areas in Luzon including Meralco franchise area are experiencing power interruption due to insufficient power supply,” the NGCP said.

Meralco also said that parts of its service area were affected by power outages. The power distributor earlier said that outages may last 10 to 15 minutes, but later said that its restoration activity is “taking longer than expected.”

Commenters on Meralco’s Facebook page showed that outages allegedly hit parts of Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Bulacan and Metro Manila. 

The NGCP earlier warned that power reserves would be thin during the dry months of March to May, just when consumption would be rising.

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