Manila Electric Co. said that by early Tuesday it had almost fully restored power supply to around 1.7 million customers affected by Typhoon Aghon but warned of possible outages as the National Grid Corp. declared yellow and red alerts in the Luzon Grid.
On Monday night, 100,00 Meralco customers were briefly affected by a power outage due to the implementation of manual load dropping to avoid a supply shortage that could affect a wider area.
Meralco continued to restore electricity service in areas hit by Typhoon Aghon.
Meralco said that as of 6:00 a.m. Tuesday, affected customers are already down to 17,000 out of the more than 1.7 million who were hit by either momentary or sustained power interruptions. Most of the affected customers are in Quezon, Laguna, while the rest are in parts of Batangas, Cavite, Metro Manila, Rizal, and Bulacan, the power utility said.
“Rest assured that our crews are working non-stop to restore service the soonest possible time,” Meralco Spokesperson and Head of Corporate Communications Joe R. Zaldarriaga said.
Meantime, the listed power distributor said large customers capable of producing large amounts of electricity continued to help alleviate the power supply shortage in the Luzon Grid.
“The continued participation of our big-load customers proves to be very beneficial in managing the current supply situation. They collectively de-loaded around 300 MW yesterday, helping minimize rotational power interruptions despite the hours-long Red Alert that started at 1:00 p.m., ” Zaldarriaga said.
Even with these contingency measures, Zaldarriaga said that Meralco is ready to cut power supply in some areas to ensure its distribution system isn’t overburdened.
Failure of Meralco’s power system could result in massive blackouts that could affect millions of consumers and businesses.
