Meralco announced yesterday that there will be a tentative rotating power outages. Like most, I just new this when we experienced around 2 hours of no power this hot and humid afternoon. May be because of the very short notice and no list of affected areas were provided that not all are aware of the schedule of the outages. This afternoon, around 1PM, Meralco posted several updates with specific areas.

Posted on Meralco’s FB page July 11, 10:10PM: Plant outages expected to cause power interruption

Meralco confirmed receiving an advise from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) forecasting that there will be a system deficiency (red alert) tomorrow. The deficiency for the Luzon grid is estimated to be around 715 MW (536 MW for Meralco) at noon peak, 620 MW (465 MW for Meralco) at afternoon peak and 220 MW (165 MW for Meralco) at evening peak. This is due to the “PIGging (Pipeline Inspection Gauge)” activities of Ilijan NGPP (1,200MW) and the outages of several plants including: Pagbilao 1 (382 MW), GN Power 2 (302 MW), Calaca 2 (330 MW), and Masinloc 1 (315MW).

Because of the forecasted deficiency, Meralco said that there would be tentative rotating power outages (manual load dropping) tomorrow lasting around three hours per circuit from about 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Most of the Meralco franchise areas are likely to experience these 3-hour rotating brownouts during this period. Therefore, the public is advised to make the necessary preparations (like charging of emergency lights, cellphones) to ease the effect of these rotating outages.

To mitigate the impact of the supply deficiency, Meralco will call on its commercial customers under the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) to carry out a voluntary reduction in their consumption during peak-hours. By doing this, the customers participating in the program can help reduce the aggregate demand for power.

In the next coming days, Meralco has posted the the latest maintenance schedule. Affected areas include Makati, Manila, and provinces like Laguna, Cavite, Batangas and Quezon. Click on the links to check if your area will be affected so you can make the necessary preparations like charging of emergency lights/ fans and your phones.

For further details, you may reach Meralco through the hotline 16211.

Meralco Maintenance Schedule: Web Site 1 | Web Site 2