ILOILO CITY – An unscheduled power interruption hit Western Visayas yesterday afternoon.
A system disturbance affected the Visayas grid at 1:51 p.m., according to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in an advisory.
It forewarned the public of the grid status such as red alert from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and yellow alert from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Red alert refers to the system condition when the contingency reserve is zero or a generation deficiency exists.
Yellow alert, on the other hand, is a system condition where the total of all reserves is less than the capacity of the largest plant online.
Meanwhile, Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC) said grid disturbance caused the outages of various power generation plants in Panay Island, including PEDC.
“We are exerting all our efforts to restore PEDC’s normal operations,” it added.
MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power), Iloilo City’s sole power distributor, yesterday said with power plants offline, over 563 megawatts of supply were lost in grid and from the distribution utilities.
“Lauman ang posible malawig nga blackout kag manual load dropping (MLD) sa masunod nga mga inoras tubtob nga mag-andar ang tanan nga mga planta. Ang MORE Power bilang isa ka distribution utility magahulat lang sang supply sang kuryente agud nga i-distribute sa mga konsumidor,” it added.
As of 4:37 p.m. yesterday, MORE Power was able to successfully restore power supply to the following feeders: Jaro Feeder 1, Jaro Feeder 2, Mandurriao Feeder 3, Mandurriao Feeder 5, Molo Feeder 2, Molo Feeder 3, and City Proper Feeder 1.
“We will energize the remaining feeders as soon as we receive clearance from NGCP. Please note that the energization process will depend on the allowable load given by NGCP,” MORE Power said.
Mayor Jerry Treñas, for his part, said yesterday he was asking 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.
The city mayor added consumers must demand better services from power providers since they are operating a monopoly.
On Feb. 20 this year, NGCP system disturbance also caused massive brownout in Panay Island and Guimaras. A snake was the culprit behind the massive power loss, explained NGCP president and chief executive officer, Anthony L. Almeda.
Almeda said their initial investigation showed a snake intrusion on the side of the Panay Diesel Power Plant 1 (PDPP 1) Transformer No. 1 caused the interruption, which resulted in a fault at their 138kV line.
“The protection system of the plant was unable to isolate the fault which resulted in severe undervoltage and cascading tripping of power plants in Panay such as the Panay Energy Development Corporation units 1 and 2, Palm Concepcion Power Corporation unit 1, San Lorenzo wind farm, Central Azucarera de Antonio Biomass, and Villasiga Hydro Power Plant,” Almeda explained./PN
