ILOILO City – The possibility of rotating blackouts looms over Iloilo City due to delays in a critical power facility upgrade.
MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power), the city’s exclusive electricity distributor, is pressing for immediate action from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to avoid a power crisis.
This concern was highlighted by MORE Power’s president and CEO Roel Castro during a recent city council meeting. He emphasized the urgent need for the NGCP to upgrade and increase the capacity of its Iloilo City Substation.
This need was underscored following a blackout on Jan. 2.
According to Castro, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) ordered the reclassification of the assets as transmission assets two years ago. The 3x100MVA new Iloilo Substation is in NGCP’s Transmission Development Program (TDP), and it was supposed to be finished last December 2023. As of this writing, however, it hasn’t even started yet, and it needs a 450-day construction period.
The delay in the project’s start is attributed to the lack of a commercial agreement between NGCP and Global Business Power Corp. (GBPC) regarding the reclassified assets in the La Paz districtss.
With Iloilo City’s status as a key investment destination in Region 6 and an annual load demand growth of 4%, the existing NGCP facility may be inadequate by early 2025, said Castro.
He warned that if the uprating of the NGCP’s Iloilo 3x100MVA Substation is not started immediately, by 2025 the loading capacity of NGCP’s transformer in Santa Barbara, Iloilo, would exceed the limits of NGCP’s System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS).
This could result in power interruptions for MORE Power, Iloilo Electric Cooperative 1, and the Iloilo Provincial Capitol, said Castro.
He stressed that the lack of capacity in NGCP’s substation by 2025 could lead to supply shortages and load shedding, adversely affecting the economy of Iloilo City and nearby areas.
However, if the uprating of the NGCP’s 3x100MVA Iloilo Substation is completed, along with the Cebu, Negros, and Panay backbone transmission project, future power supply issues could be avoided.
Castro has reached out to ERC chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta, requesting the commission’s intervention. He also raised this issue with senators and congressmen in recent hearings about power blackouts in the Panay and Guimaras islands.
NGCP executives have committed to completing the project by the end of December 2024./PN
