MANILA — The Department of Energy (DOE) on Monday said it was verifying the cause of forced outages earlier today that prompted the country's power grid operator to place Luzon on yellow and red alerts.

"We assure the public that the DoE is verifying the cause of the forced outages this morning as there appears to be no fuel supply constraints," Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said in a statement.

On Monday morning, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) announced that the Luzon power grid would be on red alert from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

It also said that yellow alert would be raised from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

A yellow alert means that power reserves have fallen below ideal levels, while a red alert indicates that the power supply is insufficient to meet demand and that outages would happen in certain areas.

Lotilla said a DOE team "will conduct actual physical spot checks and validate the condition of the transmission lines and the affected power plants."

DOE added that it was informed by Meralco that participants in the power distributor's Interruptible Load Program (ILP) were warned of possible manual load dropping.

ILP participants, who are generally big businesses with backup power generators, may run their facilities to allow more grid capacity to serve other customers, DOE said.

• Expect power interruptions as Luzon power grid on yellow, red alert

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