Manila, Sept. 22 -- Outage of the 56.6 megawatts Palinpinon-2 Geothermal Power Plant and increase in projected demand contributed to the issuance of a red alert for the Visayas grid 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in an advisory at 1:40 p.m., said demand forecast for the Visayas grid during the night is expected to peak to around 130 MW.

Available supply is around 2,487 MW while peak demand is projected to rise to 2,550MW.

The NGCP said three major coal-fired power plants remain unavailable -- Unit 1 of Therma Visayas Inc., Unit 3 of the Panay Energy Development Corporation and Unit 2 of the Kepco SPC Power Corporation.

It said import from the Mindanao grid is also low, further limiting...