Looming Brownouts in Luzon

Got a text from my friend that scheduled brownouts will start again next week starting Feb. 16 to March 11, 2010. As my works are purely online and need steady supply of power to cope up with my due tasks I'm planning my work schedule as early as now. Of course tasks should be finished ahead of time to prevent missing deadlines. There are many speculations because election is just a few months away but I know this is caused by El Niño and Meralco is into maintenance of their power plants and that's to explain the low supply. To share you some info here's what I got from the news:

Palace says brownouts should follow schedule

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abs-cbnNEWS.com | 02/12/2010 5:20 PM

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang has sought assurance from power distributors that the looming brownouts in Luzon will follow a schedule.

Deputy spokesman Gary Olivar said the brownouts that are expected to start early next week should be "predictable" so businesses and households could prepare.

"We got assurance from the power sector on this. We should protect essential industries and areas with major population concentration," Olivar said.

Olivar meanwhile downplayed the effect of the series of power outages on the country's growth, saying it is not a major threat to the economy.

"Right now, I don't get any sense we are looking at a major threat to our growth progress because this is driven by El Nino (dry spell)," he noted.

Earlier, power distributor Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) warned of 3-hour long rotating power interruptions in Luzon as major power plants undergo maintenance, resulting in critically low supply.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines said that the Luzon grid would be placed on "red alert" from February 16 to March 11 due to a projected supply shortfall of at least 500 megawatts.

In Mindanao, the dry spell has forced hydroelectric plants to reduce power generation by at least 50% due to low water levels.