MANILA -- Days before the dry season starts and temperatures rise, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines said it still cannot assure consumers that there will be no brownouts this summer.

In a press briefing, NGCP Spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza says the system operator still needs to meet with government and other stakeholders like generation and distribution utilities before coming up with a summer forecast for summer.

The Department  of Energy declared in January that there will be no yellow or red alert based on projections for the next few months.

Alabanza said the NGCP cannot promise that there will be no more yellow and red alerts in the coming months, as supply will depend on generating power plants, which are also affected by rising temperatures.

Based on NGCP data, out of the projected 5,600 megawatts of committed additional capacity, only a little over 1,000 MW has been produced in Luzon.

In the Visayas, the committed additional capacity is 951 MW, and in Mindanao, 231 MW. But no additional capacities have been produced so far in these areas.

But the NGCP said that the grid is expected to have adequate supply, provided that no unplanned power plant outage occur and new power plants are commissioned on schedule.

The NGCP said that peak power demand for the year so far was seen at 12,467 MW on March 5. This is 5 percent higher than the DOE-approved forecast demand of 11,870 MW for that day.

The Department of Energy expects a peak of 14,769 MW for Luzon to happenmid-May, a 5.37 percent  increase from the 2024 actual peak of 14,016 MW