National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) spokesperson Atty. Cynthia Alabanza said Friday that unplanned shutdowns are primarily driven by high electricity demand, which is further aggravated by prevailing weather conditions.

In a radio interview with DZRH, Alabanza said several plants are undergoing maintenance shutdowns, including one of the NGCP transmission lines that was affected due to the transmission incident, which was restored within 10 to 12 hours on the same day.

However, the spokesperson said there was supposed to be a restoration timeline for the plants’ restoration, but they were not able to come back, which is why the red alert situation has lasted for several days.

Alabanza said shutdowns are necessary to build a truly resilient system, and while people may think supply is sufficient, even small disturbances in the system are immediately reflected in power interruptions.

She also said that a resilient system, transmission, distribution, or generation issues should not be felt by consumers, as there should be excess capacity or backup plants ready to replace those that go offline.

The spokesperson said around 12 plants are currently shut down this May, which represents a large capacity of around 3,000 megawatts currently unavailable to the grid.

“But our demand, or load requirement, is over 14,000 megawatts, so ideally we should have more reserve capacity,” Alabanza said.

In light of this, she said that additional plants are operating at a reduced capacity, accounting for around 125 megawatts.

Alabanza further asserted that ng NGCP is currently waiting for large plants affected by the transmission outage, saying it is expected to return within a few hours, but can be interrupted by issues in the system.