Parts of Metro Manila and the rest of Luzon will experience rotating blackouts on Monday after power plants in Masinloc, Zambales and Sual, Pangasinan failed to provide enough power for the Luzon grid.

Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) released an advisory stating the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) advised that there will be a rotational brownout today, Monday, March 1, between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. due to a boiler tube leak of Sual 1 and Masinloc.

“Outages lasting two to three hours will be experienced by Luzon grid’s load customers,” said NGCP.

The Luzon grid has zero reserves now from last week’s  700 MW reserve, and posted more generation deficiency than the Mindanao grid that  recorded 390 MW generation deficiency as of 10 a.m. Monday.

“Luzon grid, which previously had all running power plants connected and synchronized to the grid, now has a generation deficiency of 478 MW. The sudden decrease in the available capacity when compared with previous days’ figures is attributed to the shutdown of two major plants namely, Sual 1 (647 MW) operated by Team Energy Philippines and Masinloc 1 (315 MW) owned and operated by AES Corp.,” the NGCP said.

“Manila and Luzon residents are advised to coordinate directly with their respective distribution utilities and electric cooperatives for information on the power interruption schedule and list of specific areas which will experience temporary power outage,”  NGCP added.

Meanwhile, Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldariagga stated Meralco has not yet receive word from the NGCP that the power outage will be addressed. He said some of the areas experiencing power outages as of 12 p.m. are parts of Alfonso and Bacoor in Cavite and Tagaytay City as well.

“We are hoping that there will be some improvement but being a distribution utility, we are not in a position to determine what the power supply will be tomorrow. We rely on the announcement of the system operator, which is the NGCP,” Zaldariagga said.

The NGCP said Mindanao will continue to experience rotating blackouts after the El Niño phenomenon affected the output of hydropower plants.

- Jenny Villareal