IT DOES seem to be the norm. On April 27 we were once again hit by a massive power outage lasting for almost six hours in the middle of a hot summer day.
Yes folks, it was an unscheduled power outage affecting the whole of Western Visayas courtesy of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
A system disturbance affected the Visayas grid at 1:51 p.m., according to NGCP.
Meanwhile, Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC) said grid disturbance caused the outages of various power generation plants in Panay Island, including PEDC.
MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power), Iloilo City’s sole power distributor, said with power plants offline, over 563 megawatts of supply were lost in grid and from the distribution utilities.
As of 4:37 p.m. that day, MORE Power was able to successfully restore power supply to some of the feeders and was able to fully energize all by 10:51 p.m.
MORE Power can only energize all the feeders depending on clearance from NGCP. Please note that the energization process will depend on the allowable load given by NGCP.
On the other hand, Mayor Jerry Treñas said he will ask NGCP to explain the region-wide blackout.
“I am also asking NGCP to improve their facilities so that these occurrences will not happen. The rapid development of our region will be affected by constant blackouts,” he said. (Panay News 4/28/2023)
Here’s the funny part – it’s an island-wide (including Negros and Guimaras) blackout caused by a “grid disturbance” so all NGCP power plants are offline. Yet the usual idiots are still blaming MORE Power. Stupidity is really incurable.
Take note, brownouts are counterproductive. Indeed, the last thing that MORE Power wants is the occurrence of power failures/interruptions or brownouts contrary to the belief of some poorly informed, intellectually challenged individuals. Simply because every time a brownout happens – whether scheduled or unscheduled – MORE Power stands to lose not only income but gets to incur added expenses. Bear in mind that the power provider company did not go into this venture to lose money, and again contrary to the belief of some poorly informed intellectually challenged individuals.
And this is what MORE Power president and chief operations officer Roel Z. Castro has to say about brownouts:
“No one wants power interruptions, especially us.
“Let us all be reminded that MORE Power, like all electric distribution utilities, can only charge for electric power that passed thru the consumers’ meters and which they actually used. So, if there is no electricity, like during power interruptions, the electric meters don’t move at all, and thus there’s nothing MORE Power charges its consumers for.”
There is, however, power interruptions or brownouts that cannot be avoided as they are necessary to upgrade and fix the mess left behind by the erstwhile power provider PECO.
According to MORE Power president Roel Castro: “If we don’t do the replacements, more serious damage could happen, resulting in longer power outages that can happen anytime. That is why we need to prevent such occurrences thru our rehabilitation and maintenance works.”
To completely change all the dilapidated poles left by PECO it will take MORE Power three to five years to complete the replacement job, which would require scheduled power interruptions every now and then.
Throughout all these power interruptions scheduled or otherwise, MORE Power has always on standby technical teams ready to address the situation and bring back power the soonest time possible. As we have mentioned before, it is mutually beneficial to the natives of “I Am Iloilo City” and MORE Power that there are no power interruptions or brownouts.
The last time a snake intrusion on the Panay Diesel Power Plant Transformer No. 1 caused the interruption, resulting in a fault at their 138kV line, perhaps this time it was a lizard.
On hindsight, MORE Power should seriously consider alternative sources of power as NGCP has once more proven to be totally unreliable./PN
