Panay Island power plants down

Households in Panay Island were plunged into darkness on Tuesday afternoon after multiple power plants shut down,  National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said.

NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza explained that 302 megawatts (MW) of power was lost to the Visayas grid due to the tripping of the plants, while 150 MW was lost because of planned maintenance shutdowns.

This translates to a total of 452 MW unavailable to the Visayas grid.

“Currently, none of the power plants in Panay Island are generating power. At 3:07 p.m., Panay Island was isolated from the rest of the Visayas grid,” Alabanza said, adding that restoration was ongoing.

NGCP has yet to disclose the cause of the power plant outages.

According to NGCP, an “internal issue” resulted in the tripping of  the Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) Unit 1 plant at noon on Tuesday.

PEDC Unit 2 and “other plants” subsequently tripped at 2:19 p.m.

“NGCP is focusing its efforts on stabilizing voltage, and [has] extended feedback power to Iloilo and PEDC. Load restoration will be done conservatively by matching loads to restored generation to prevent repeated voltage failure,” the country’s lone grid operator said in a statement sent to reporters.

Panay Island is composed of the provinces of Iloilo, Antique, Capiz and Aklan.

READ: Western Visayas power crisis

NGCP raised a yellow alert on the island from 4:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 2.