ILOILO City – Power was restored to full capacity on Sunday in all of Panay Island affected by a widespread power outage, less than 24 hours after a Saturday emergency meeting called by Iloilo’s Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. and Uswag Ilonggo party-list’s Rep. James Ang and participated by various local government units and energy sector stakeholders.
The blackout’s cause was determined to be on the grid facilities of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) which is the government franchisee tasked to operate, maintain and develop the country’s state-owned power grid, and controls the supply and demand of power.
Considering that power is already 100 percent in all areas in the city, Mayor Jerry Treñas said the city government put on hold the plan to declare a state of calamity due to the problem on energy.
Treñas earlier said if the power interruption remained to be problematic without any solution in sight, he would consider placing the city under a state of calamity.
Defensor and Ang pressed the NGCP, Department of Enegry (DOE) and Energy Regulation Commission (ERC) to fast track the repair, rehabilitation and improvement of the country’s transmission infrastructure, especially the Visayas grid.
“Una, mahina ang system nga ginatawag. Nagsaka ang demand sa kuryente (but) the system is not enough. Siling sang DOE, ang armas kulang para i-accommodate ang traffic. That is why long-term ang solution. Ang aton protection mechanism kinanglan pa kay-uhon kag may mga ancillary measures pa dira,” the governor explained
In Iloilo province, Iloilo Electric Cooperative (Ileco) 1 fully energized its franchise area in southern and south-central Iloilo by 12:30 a.m. yesterday.
Ileco 2 and 3, for their part, reported having restored power in central and northern Iloilo as of 3 a.m. and 2:06 a.m. on the same day, respectively.
Iloilo City’s sole power distributor, MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power), was able to fully restore power in its franchise area by 3 a.m. yesterday.
Defensor, Ang and Treñas thanked the power industry players for meeting their commitments to fully restore power before noon yesterday.
“It is my hope that this goes on from Tuesday when offices are open and demand for power increases,” said Treñas.
As chairman of the Regional Development Council’s (RDC) Infrastructure Committee, the city mayor said he will be calling concerned national agencies to ensure that programs and projects related to power are implemented on time.
For her part, Iloilo City’s Rep. Julienne Baronda disclosed she would file a resolution on May 2 calling for a congressional inquiry into the blackout.
“We will ask the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines and other relevant agencies to explain,” said Baronda.
Iloilo 2nd District’s Rep. Michael Gorriceta, on April 29, wrote NGCP president and chief executive officer Antony Almeda recommending a thorough investigation and technical evaluation of NGCP transmission facilities.
DOE REPORT
The DOE on Sunday reported that while NGCP substations’ capacity for distribution utilities (DUs) are limited and below the ideal level, the former will impose very tight limits to the protection system through the system integrity protection schemes (SIPS) so that the transmission will be stable and further deterioration of the system is prevented.
SIPS refers to a protection system designed to detect abnormal or predetermined system conditions; it takes automatic corrective actions other than and/or in addition to the isolation of faulted components in order to preserve the integrity of the Power System or strategic portions thereof.
On the distribution side, on the other hand, the DUs will have to manage their load given the limited capacity of substations, and accordingly supply of power, while NGCP is working on full recovery of the grid, according to the DOE.
Thus, DUs may still impose rotational brownouts until full recovery of the grid.
With the entry of Palm Concepcion Power Corporation (PCPC), there would have a stronger network through the generation reactive support and the system voltage will stabilize to normal condition, added the DOE.
The more stable solution towards normalcy is to increase the capacity of the substations through the capacity of internal generation within the island, together with the completion of the Cebu-Negros-Panay 230kV Backbone Stage 3 transmission line project by August, as what NGCP reported, according to DOE./PN
