Manila, May 21 -- Power consumers served by 18 electric cooperatives in the Visayas may experience power outages from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday as the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) implements manual load dropping (MLD) to address low capacity.

This, as the Visayas grid is once again on yellow alert status from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. as capacity is affected by the forced outage of three generation units of major coal-fired power plants since last week.

NGCP said the MDL is needed to address the declining capacity in the Visayas grid due to the forced outage since last week of units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc. and unit 3 of the Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC).

These three generating units are on top of the ...