Persistent Power Outage in Philippines Triggers Senate Probe

(Bloomberg) -- Power outages in the Philippine capital and provinces in its main Luzon island will likely continue on Monday as some power plants shut, triggering an investigation at the Senate.

The Luzon grid will be on red alert this afternoon and on yellow alert most of the day due to insufficient operating reserves, according to National Grid Corp. of the Philippines or NGCP, which operates the nation’s high-voltage transmission lines.

Under a red alert, manual load dropping or rotational blackout is expected, while a yellow alert means reserves are less than the capacity of the biggest plant online. Luzon has available capacity of 10,669 megawatts on Monday against expected peak demand of 10,619 megawatts, it said.

As many as 40 cities in at least seven provinces have been affected by the rotating power interruption due to unplanned outages of five power plants in Luzon, which accounts for bulk of the nation’s demand, said Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, head of the chamber’s energy committee which will investigate the blackouts.

Read: After a Water Shortage, Power Outages Hit Philippine Capital

To contact the reporter on this story: Cecilia Yap in Manila at cyap19@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net, Clarissa Batino

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