NGCP denies responsibility for Western Visayas blackout

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) denied claims that it failed to ensure steady power supply in Western Visayas after a four-day outage, asserting on Saturday that it had followed its protocols.

In an interview with Teleradyo Serbisyo, company spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said NGCP had met its mandate to transmit power and emphasized there were no issues with voltage or frequency at the time of the power plant tripping.

Local government units and state legislators continued to call for an investigation into the blackout, while President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. directed the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to reset NGCP’s rates without delay.

The DOE Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan reported on Saturday that 100 percent of power in Panay Island has been restored but stressed that continuous monitoring is necessary as stable operations are still in their initial phase.

NGCP provided data showing no transmission disturbances before the tripping of a power plant on January 2 and insisted it had normalized voltage immediately after the incident, while the DOE stated that proactive load reduction could have prevented the crisis.