If you live in the Visayas and felt uneasy about your electricity this August, you had every reason to. From August 1 to 6, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) issued not one, but four yellow alerts. For those who don’t live and breathe power industry jargon, a yellow warning is the grid’s way of saying: “We’re cutting it close—one more problem and we’re in trouble.”
On August 5, the numbers spoke for themselves. The available power supply was just 2,528 megawatts, while peak demand reached 2,475 megawatts. That’s barely a cushion. It’s like driving with your gas tank hovering just above empty—you’ll make it home, but heaven forbid there’s traffic on the way.
The Department of Energy confirmed what many feared: 14 generating facilities had to shut down that day, pulling 385 megawatts out of the system, while five others limped along at reduced capacity. Simultaneously, troubles occurred in Mindanao, where 11 plants went offline, making the picture even grimmer.
And this isn’t just a one-week glitch. Some power plants have been out since April. Shockingly, six have been down since 2023. That’s two years of lost capacity, yet here we are, still waiting for a fix. Meanwhile, six more plants are producing below capacity, leaving 744 megawatts unavailable. Now, what does this mean for ordinary people?
Two things: First, we’re one heartbeat away from rolling brownouts whenever the grid is stressed. Second, brace yourselves—these shortages almost certainly translate to higher power bills. What generation and transmission charges do you see on your bill? They’re going up because the cost of an unstable system always finds its way to the consumer’s pocket.
What worries me most is the pattern. Four yellow alerts in a single week should not be treated as routine. These are not isolated “hiccups.” They are red flags waving in our faces, telling us our power sector is not as resilient as we’d like to believe.
So, how long can we keep balancing on this tightrope? As August winds down, the grid is already strained. If nothing changes, the coming months could be rough for businesses, households, and everyone wanting to keep the lights on without breaking the bank.
Perhaps it’s time we stopped treating yellow alerts as mere technical advisories and started reading them for what they really are: warning signs that the system we depend on is cracking under pressure. Unless the government, regulators, and power companies get ahead of this, consumers will keep paying the price—literally.