“Ilonggos deserve the best from us. Nothing more, nothing less.” – Roel Castro, MORE Power President and CEO
ACCORDING to MORE Power, by February 2025 the entire power distribution facilities of “I Am Iloilo City” will be fully modernized.
Bold words from a power distribution utility barely three years into the job after taking over a now defunct power distribution whose only claim to fame was that they’ve been in existence for a century, but modernization, goodness no.
No question about it. We’ve seen the modernization in progress and are benefitting from it. But are they up to the task by 2025?
Let’s check out these excerpts from the Nov. 22, 2022 issue of Panay News:
Non-stop rehab; MORE Power: no letup in modernization of facilities
“After we complete the five-year modernization plan, residents can expect a robust distribution system with maximum tolerance to causes of unintended outages, capable of handling bigger demand from consumers and industries,” said MORE Power president and chief executive officer Roel Castro.
The company made the pledge two and a half years ago when it took over the franchise area of Iloilo City.
Its modernization and development plan covers all of the city’s 180 barangays and aims to increase energy efficiency, minimize power losses and improve distribution system reliability.
Among the other deliverables that it has already fulfilled is the acquisition of a mobile substation (with another one coming very soon), plus the soon-to-be-completed Megaworld substation.
One of MORE Power’s most notable achievements is the establishment of the 69-kilovolt transmission station in Barangay Banuyao, La Paz district which reconnected Iloilo City to the Visayas power grid managed by the National Grid Corp. 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 to flexibility in choosing power suppliers.
In addition, MORE Power was able to complete several up rating projects for its primary and secondary lines; installed and replaced 1,518 primary and 1,240 secondary poles and 701 distribution transformers; replaced over 30,000 old kWh-meters, and installed more than 40 elevated meter centers.
To further increase 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 improvement in both the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) are now significantly felt.
SAIDI, which measures how long, on average, each customer was without power each year, a 47% improvement since 2020 was achieved, with a target of 61% by 2025 or an equivalent of 28 minutes compared to the international benchmark of 75 minutes.
For SAIFI, which indicates how often the average customer experiences sustained interruption during a predefined period of time, MORE Power was able to reduce it by 50 percent since 2020 or from 1.79 to 0.89 in 2022, with a target of 81 percent or 0.33 by 2025.
MORE Power was able to drastically reduce the system loss from 29.72 percent in April 2020 to 7.5 percent in October 2022 with its vigilant campaign on anti-pilferage apprehending violators regardless of position, affiliation or social status.
And this is how the campaign on anti-pilferages look like based on actual individual violators apprehended:
By the end of 2020, there were 411 violators apprehended, and by the end of 2021 1,312 were apprehended for a total of 2,713 individual violators apprehended. I’m expecting that number will increase by the end of 2022.
Well, it does look like MORE Power will actually fulfill its pledge two and a half years ago when it took over the franchise area of Iloilo City.
So to answer our question if MORE Power is up to it, from all indications, yes. They’re up to the task, and more./PN
