MANILA — The National Grid Corp of the Philippines on Friday said that there could be thin power reserves or yellow alert in 7 months out of the entire year.
The entire month of May may be under yellow alert, NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said, adding the conditions could worsen if there are unexpected plant outages.
The Department of Energy's projection factors in a forced outage of 500-600 MW but based on historical data, there were instances when the grid lost more than 4,000 MW of power supply due to emergency shutdowns which according to Alabanza, cannot be predicted.
Meanwhile, motorists are likely to see a slight increase in gasoline and diesel prices next week due to global recession fears and a potential increase in fuel demand in China, the DOE said.
The DOE said Friday's prices were crucial in determining whether the oil price hike in diesel and gasoline would push through.
Based on the first 4 trading days, gasoline is up by P0.15 per liter, diesel is also up by P0.05 per, and kerosene is still down by P0.49 per liter.
The small reduction in diesel however can be easily wiped out by premium and freight costs.
The NGCP joins Meralco and DOE in asking the public to use electricity efficiently in order to help save on power.
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