A commitment to deliver better electricity service to the Ilonggos is a promise fulfilled by MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power).
Now on its third year of service here and over halfway into its five-year development plan, the city’s sole power distributor has invested over a billion pesos now to deliver on its commitment to bring about welcome changes in the electric service in terms of efficiency, sufficiency and reliability.
President and Chief Executive Officer Roel Z. Castro said that since MORE Power took over, the company has already poured in around P1.5 billion worth of investments to upgrade its power distribution facilities.
We recrafted our approach and our definition of how to deliver service to customers. The usual thinking is monopoly; wale naman sgang ibang choice but to go to you. But we never stayed in our office; we never waited for people to come to our office. We really went to the barangays to entice them to apply para maging safe ang kangang connection, to legalize ang services natin sa kanila,” said Castro.
OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW
MORE Power replaced old and dilapidated facilities, especially the substations, and acquired new ones.
For one, its 10 MegaVolt Amperes (MVA) mobile substation for Megaworld (Iloilo Business Park) provides a “breathing space” for Mandurriao and Molo districts.
It addresses the high demand and unstable voltage of the business district and at the same time stabilizes the critical loading condition of the Mandurriao substation.
But MORE Power is not settling for just a 10 MVA; to meet the anticipated bigger demands of the district, it is constructing a bigger and state-of-the-art 30 MVA permanent substation at Megaworld.
Another milestone achieved by MORE Power in the past three years was the establishment of the 69-kilovolt transmission station, or Banuyao Switching Station, in La Paz last May 2021. Through this, Iloilo City has started to be 100 percent connected to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
This project did not only improve the reliability of the system but also helped Iloilo City consumers struggling at the height of the coronavirus pandemic; they were able to enjoy a lower power rate as this allowed MORE Power 100 percent access to the grid, resulting in flexibility in choosing power suppliers.
The power rate dropped by 36-percent in July 2021 billing of Iloilo City consumers.
MORE Power is also planning to get rid of the very old General Luna substation and transfer the City Proper substation to Diversion Road in Mandurriao.
The power distributor is currently conducting a total rehabilitation of all other substations.
It has acquired a state-of-the-art 30 MVA mobile substation where the load could be transferred to continue to provide power to consumers while rehabilitation is ongoing.
Procured from Turkey-based Aktif Elektroteknik, it is the first stand-alone mobile substation in the country. It has a power transformer load capacity of 30 MVA and could be extended to 36 MVA. Also, it could accommodate five feeder lines.
All the other substations need total rehabilitation. We need about eight months to one year per substation to do it: said Castro.
Castro said they are also planning to split the Molo substation and establish a separate substation for Arevalo.
‘Arevalo seems to be growing, and the city plans to put housing projects in the area. As that grows, balm masyadong loaded na ang Molo. We might have to put up another substation,” Castro said.
When MORE Power started as the city’s new distribution utility, the system loss was about 30 percent, contributing to significant instability in the system.
But because of its various programs and vigilant campaign on anti-pilferage, which apprehended violators regardless of position, affiliation or social status, MORE Power was able to drastically reduce system loss from 29.72 percent in April 2020 to 6.6 percent in December 2022.
The drive to bring down the system loss was also an investment in the facilities for reliability. During the first year, several hundred transformers ang pinalitan nalin. It was done in tandem with the systems loss reduction program: said Castro.
SYSTEM UPRATING
Castro believes that the strength of one’s system is only as good as its weakest link. Thus, MORE Power addresses all issues and concerns, no matter how small they are. “Even if you have a very good system, it will only be able to deliver up to the extent of this weakest link,” he said.
MORE Power was able to complete several uprating projects for its primary and secondary lines; install and replace thousands of primary and secondary poles as well as distribution transformers; replace over 30,000 old kWh-meters; and install several elevated meter centers.
To further increase the reliability of the distribution system, 42 units Automatic Circuit Reclosers (ACR), 12 units Load Break Switches (LBS), pole skirts, and silicone rubber insulators were also installed.
As a result, substantial improvements in both the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) are now significantly felt.
SAIDI measures how long, on average, each customer is without power each year. A 47% improvement in the SAIDI has been achieved since 2020. The target would be 61%, or 28 minutes, compared to the international benchmark of 75 minutes.
SAIFI indicates how often the average customer experiences sustained interruptions during a predefined period. MORE Power was able to reduce it by 50 percent since 2020, or from 1.79 to 0.89 in 2022.
Castro said MORE Power is very much on track as far as the implementation of its five-year development plan is concerned.
For him, the first three years of the plan focused more on rehabilitation, and the next two years would be full-swing modernization.
This will include the installation of a communication system, or the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, where all substations can interact.
When the LBS are integrated into SCADA along with the ACR5, a self-healing system could be implemented. The system could automatically isolate a defective section of the power network and transfer the remaining segment to its nearby feeder using the algorithm of the SCADA.
The process would be carried out quickly and automatically, enhancing worker safety and efficiency.
“We are doing this for the consumers, and we want to make our system world-class. Dapat hindi nararamdaman ng tao ang outage. Magkaroon man ng outage, it is only because we are scheduling it because delikado like may bagyo. But if there is no threat or hazard, dapat tuloy-tuloy yan,” said Castro./PN
