ILOILO City – The Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) passed a resolution requesting the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to explain the hours-long Panay-wide and Guimaras blackout on Monday, Feb. 20.
The city council, responding to the request of Mayor Jerry Treñas to pass the said resolution, wanted a detailed explanation on the unscheduled power interruption.
The public is still clueless, said Councilor Romel Duron, chairman of the SP committee on public utility who sponsored the resolution.
“NGCP has to explain what really happened because it may happen again. We want to know so that in the future we can prepare,” he said.
Yesterday afternoon NGCP said their technical team was still finalizing the report on the blackout.
“Once may ara na finality, that would be the time for NGCP to issue or release an official statement,” said Reagan Alcantara, NGCP’s public relations department lead specialist.
In an earlier advisory, NGCP cited a “system disturbance” in the Panay sub grid at around 11:24 a.m. as the cause of the blackout in the provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, and Guimaras.
All power industry players from generation, transmission and distribution were affected.
Although NGCP was able to restore power transmission services at around 2:24 p.m. on Monday, the power supply coming in was limited.
“Ang demand sa grid sang Panay is quite big already. Dason ang base load plants major gid nga makabulig tani para magbalik ta dayon sa normal but understandably, ang base load took time to synchronize kay damo ang ila process,” Alcantara explained./PN
