Brownouts start

Parts of Metro Cebu started to endure the effects of the power supply shortage in the Visayas Grid as rotation brownouts were implemented as early as 7 a.m. yesterday.

A group of call center workers, who had just arrived home in barangay Mabolo, Cebu City after doing an all-nighter, were forced to head back to their office at the Cebu I.T. Park after power was cut, transforming their boarding house into a virtual oven.

Some affected residents tried to seek refuge in a nearby mall, but had to wait until 10 a.m. for the doors to open.

The Visayan Electric Company (Veco), the main power distributor in Metro Cebu, implemented the rotation brownout at 1:30 pm.

Mark Kindica, head of Veco’s engineering operations group, said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) asked Veco to shed off at least 17 megawatts (MW). The impact of the outage was however, cushioned because of Veco’s Interruptible Load Program (ILP).

Kindica said Apo Cement Corp. in Naga City agreed to switch on their 7MW power generation set which greatly eased the loss for Metro Cebu.

Chong Hua Hospital likewise gave up 1.5MW.

The remaining 10MW was implemented through an almost one hour brownout that affected parts of barangays Mambaling and Basak San Nicolas in Cebu City. The brownouts lasted for 40 minutes.

At 3:09 pm, a power plant in Malitbog Leyte tripped off resulting in the automatic load shedding in some areas of Metro Cebu.

Power was interrupted for a few minutes in Talisay City and Lorega and Kamputhaw, Cebu City.
The Paknaan 311 feeder in Mandaue was cut off for less than half an hour. Aside from this, Kindica said, there was no other power interruptions.

Kindica said Veco has to rotate the brownouts in different areas depending on the request from NGCP every hour.

Veco announced schedules of at least 1-hour brownouts in different parts of Metro Cebu since Tuesday in anticipation of the power shortage.

Meanwhile, the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) yesterday asked its members to heed the call to join in the VECO’s ILP to minimize the impact of the power shortage.
Lito Maderazo, CCCI past president, asked members to sacrifice a little.

“I am urging all business establishments who are participants of the voluntary load shedding to help the Cebu economy by running their gen sets. Gamay’ng sakripisyo ni siya (This is a little sacrifice on our part) because the cost of buying fuel to generate power is higher and brownouts would hamper operations.”

Maderazo also said that the government “should work double time to put the power generating plants in place because this problem happened every summer”.

Veco Vice-President for Engineering Alfred Saludes III that yesterday, Veco needed to fill in 49 megawatts lost from NGCP.

They were able to get supply from Luzon, which gave out 91MW for Visayas consumers in addition to the supply they got from the ILP.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives independent bloc said it would invite energy officials to the floor to grill them about the tight power supply in the country.

“We want to hear it straight from them. Are we in a power crisis or not? How stable really is the supply?” the bloc said.