Mayor: Camotes ‘power crisis’ starting to hurt island’s tourism

The town mayors of Camotes Island are turning to the Cebu Provincial government to help them acquire new generator sets to address the power shortage in the island, which is one of the tourism destinations in Cebu.

Mayor Luciano Rama of Poro town, one of the four towns of the island, said that the power crisis in the island had already started to affect the tourism sector in the area.

Rama said that resorts owners and even tourists had already complained of the power shortage of the town.

He claimed that in 2016, there were at least 300,000 visitors in the island.

Rama said that the town had been experiencing a power shortfall of 1.4 megawatts from the seven MW needed by the islands to have a stable supply of electricity.

“Two weeks ago, we’re only 1.2 megawatts short. Last Monday, we’re now 1.4 megawatts short of electricity,” Rama said.

The power shortage in Camotes Island resulted to a daily, four to five-hour rotational brownout.

Camotes Electric Cooperative (Celco), the electricity provider in the area, stated that the power generators supplying electricity in the four towns of Camotes were old — most of which are already busted.

Rama said that even before the magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the Visayas last Thursday, the power supply of Camotes Island in northern Cebu has been declining.

But the power shortage in several portions of Visayas, which came as an aftermath of the earthquake, made it more difficult for local governments in the Camotes to look for alternative supplies of electricity needed to light up their towns.

Celco general manager Miguel Suarez said that as of present, only three out of the eight power generators are capable of converting gasoline into electricity for residents on Camotes Island.

The electricity supply in the four municipalities in Camotes Island is off-grid, which means that they rely on generator sets to power up houses and establishments.

Each functioning generator is capable of generating at least 1.5 megawatts of electricity. These were provided to Celco by the National Power Corporation (Napocor) nearly 10 years ago.

The entire Camotes Island needed at least seven megawatts of power supply to meet the demands of electricity in their area.

The power crisis in Camotes was raised to the Department of Energy in Central Visayas (DOE – 7) who suggested that the “long-term and the most practical” solution to their problem was to join the NGCP grid.

However, the NGCP is still finding ways to provide electricity in the entire Visayas region after the earthquake last Thursday damaged several of their bypass lines. Thus, Celco and the local government units on Camotes Island will have to look for other alternatives if they want to resolve the power shortage in the area as soon as possible.

DOE – 7 regional director Antonio Labios also reminded the local government units on Camotes Island, as well as Celco, to be aware of the continuing increase of demand in electricity supply in their area especially with the large number of tourists flocking and staying there.

In turn, the tourism industry on Camotes Island is in limbo.

CAUSE

Since they rely on off-grid electricity supply, Suarez stated that new power generators are needed to light up the entire area.

That is the reason for the towns’ mayors seeking help from the provincial government.

“We asked help from our governor to facilitate our request for another Modular Generator set. The NPC (National Power Corporation) is the one who will rent it in Metro Manila and will just send it to us. We hope that it will be done sooner so that Camotes will be given power supply. Right now there is a 1.4 megawatts shortage. It’s very alarming,” said Rama.

For the mayor, the tourism industry on Camotes Islands, which brings in the largest share of income, is greatly affected by the power crisis on the island.

DOE – 7 regional director Antonio Labios initially suggested for Celco to connect their electrical lines to the NGCP however, this does not instantly solve the power crisis in the place since power shortage is being experienced in other portions of the Visayas, most of which are hooked up to the supply of the said firm.