NGCP rolls out over a billion pesos power projects in Cebu

Lawyer Cynthia Alabanza speaks to city and municipal information officers in Cebu during a communications enhancement workshop. (Photo courtesy of Philippine Information Agency Cebu)

Three ongoing projects by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in Cebu are expected to boost reliability of power in the province as well as in the whole Visayas.

Lawyer Cynthia Alabanza, NGCP spokesperson, said that with the transmission projects they are promoting now, Cebu will have the power it needs to keep moving forward.

“I can’t possibly understate it when I say that it is energy that drives the economy. Without energy, you cannot have a thriving economy,” she told reporters at the sidelines of a communications enhancement workshop for government information officers on Wednesday.

Alabanza said power is important to a country whose economy largely depends on the manufacturing and retail sectors.

These sectors, she said, employ a large portion of the country’s population and should anything that might happen to industries due to unstable power will reflect negatively on the economy.

This week, the NGCP energized two 138-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines connecting its substation in Barangay Calong-Calong, Toledo City to its substation in Barangay Colon, Naga City.

The NGCP spent around $4.4 million and P121.74 million in offshore (imported materials) and on-shore (locally sourced materials) costs, respectively, for the substation component and lines spanning 26 kilometers.
Alabanza said this will bolster transmission services from the Visayas Grid to the interconnected island grids of Cebu and Bohol.

“If you think about transmission lines as highways, when we upgrade, it means we are widening the highway,” she said.

If there is congestion or too much traffic, electricity cannot get from the source to Cebu — the load center of the Visayas — where it is needed, Alabanza explained.

Engineer Phil Salanza, NGCP Visayas projects division head, said the newly energized lines would facilitate power coming from the Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC) in Toledo and the Kepco-SPC Power Corp. in Naga.

Also set to be energized by the second week of September this year are the two 138-kV lines connecting the Colon substation to the Cebu City substation. The transmission company spent $7.05 million and P219.77 million for the substation component as well as lines spanning 27 km.

Engineer Christian Ereño, NGCP Visayas system planning division head, said they also planned to connect the Cebu City substation to a substation in Lapu-Lapu City through a 230-kV line.

They were supposed to energize the line this year, but the project was postponed due to road right-of-way concerns.

“Once the line is energized, this would translate to higher reliability of the transmission system so we would be experiencing less interruptions,” he explained.

The NGCP estimated the offshore and on-shore costs of the project at $10.6 million and P219.77 million, respectively.

With more than 21,000 circuit kilometers of lines, 20,000 transmission towers, and 140 substations, NGCP’s operations are considered the largest in the country.

The Visayas grid is composed of the interconnected island grids of Cebu, Negros, Panay, Leyte, Samar, and Bohol, accounting for 14 percent of the country’s power demand.