No looming power crisis in the Philippines: energy department

This assurance was revealed despite outages that lashed Luzon recently.

The Philippines' Department of Energy (DOE) officials assured the public that there is no need to worry about a power crisis amidst series of power outages that pounded Luzon, it's biggest island, recently.

Energy secretary Alfonso Cusi said that the department is already doing its job to ensure there is ample supply and avoid a power crisis.

He added that the power outages residents experienced from July 26 to August 5 are due to power plants' scheduled maintenance operations. According to the department's probe, some plants had to postpone their maintenance that were previously scheduled earlier because of the May 9 elections. Plants were forced to do a simultaneous maintenance shutdown because they can't stretch their operating schedules further.

The Luzon grid was previously placed on red and yellow alerts because of thinning reserves following the shutdowns. Cusi said that the grid is back to normal, which means that there is sufficient supply to cover all the reserve resquirement.