Veco prepares contingency plan for May 13 polls

Standby emergency crews from the Visayas Electric Company (VECO) will be assigned to cover polling places that are located within its franchise area during the May 13 midterm election. /File Photo from www.veco.com.ph

CEBU CITY, Philippines—The Visayan Electric Company (Veco) has committed to provide faster response if power outages occur in polling places within its service areas during the May 13 polls.

Veco chief operating officer Anton Mari Perdices said the company had been implementing proactive measures to address possible causes of outages. These include line clearing program, line enhancement programs, checking power supply connection of polling places and network reliability program, he said.

The company has cleared lines of branches of trees, entangled kite, tarpaulin, billboards, building construction and low-lying cables, which could cause unplanned outages and electrocution. They also installed tree wires, conductor cover and fixed lines, Perdices said.

To ensure continuous power supply during the elections, Veco also checked connection facilities from transformer to metering and if needed, upgraded overloaded transformers as well as upgraded or replaced wires, he bared.

Veco had installed smart network devices that can be remotely operated and used in transferring to another power source. It could also be used to sectionalize and isolate the faulted line.

According to Perdices, the company came up with contingency measures to address power outages such as the creation of a contingency team, 24×7 distribution network monitoring and control, and creation of standby emergency crews.

He disclosed that they have standby emergency crews assigned to cover polling places from Liloan up north to San Fernando down south. Each crew has been assigned to specific polling places and areas.

There are 18 mobile crews allocated for the entire franchise areas; 20 contractor crews and electricians to address meter and service drop related concerns; 10 emergency dispatchers, eight substation crews, four line contractor gangs and 20 on-call support personnel.

On the other hand, Veco’s 24×7 monitoring and control is made possible through the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, which enable the company to remotely monitor and control feeder breakers and line switches; automatically obtain fault data and location; fast isolation and restoration of faults, and round the clock radio communication monitoring./dcb