ILOILO City – There could be rotational power outages in Panay Island until August.
The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines’ (NGCP) high-voltage submarine cable connecting the islands of Negros and Cebu got damaged.
“May possibility nga may rotating power interruption sa Panay kay critical ang system pero kung makaya lang sang supply and demand indi man madayon,” said NGCP information officer Michelle Visera.
On July 6, NGPC announced they were repairing a 138 kilovolt (kV) high-voltage submarine cable damaged by dredging and re-channeling activities of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) along Bio-os River in Barangay Jagna, Amlan, Negros Oriental on June 15.
The cable, which interconnected Negros and Cebu, had two circuits of 138kV submarine cable with 90 megawatts (MW) capacity each for a total of 180 MW.
Because of the damage on one of the two circuits, transmission capacity between the two islands is limited only to 90MW.
NGCP’s System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) was automatically activated after the incident to isolate the affected circuit and prevent overloading of the remaining cable.
Initial reports received by NGCP indicated that a contributing factor to the incident was the deviation on the agreed work site by DPWH. NGCP then requested the local government of Amlan and the DPWH to temporarily stop their operations, and immediately implemented measures to contain the oil spill.
“It is unfortunate that this happened at such a crucial time when electricity is critical to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response efforts. NGCP assures its stakeholders that all hands are on deck to restore the affected facility and mitigate the impacts of the oil spill and scattered cable debris,” the company stated.
The extent of the damage was fully assessed between June 23 and 24.
Coordination is ongoing with partner foreign technical experts for the commencement of actual repair activities.
Vicera noted that rotational brownout may occur on evenings between 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m., depending on the system condition.
They also issued an imminent warning of a possible rotational brownout for July 8.
“Pero since nakaya man sang supply naton ang demand, wala nadayun,” Vicera explained.
Vicera appealed to power consumers to conserve energy especially during this time that the system is critical.
NGCP also does not discount unplanned power outages in the power plants.
“So kon normal kag wala man lang problema ang mga planta nga nagadalagan pareho kagab-i (July 8) so wala man sang may natabo nga Manual Load Dropping (MLD),” Vicera said.
MLD is the process of manually and deliberately removing pre-selected loads from a power system in response to an abnormal condition in order to maintain the integrity of the system.
Last night, the NGCP announced it may implement MLD on July 9 starting 7 p.m. in the franchise areas of MORE Power, Iloilo Electric Cooperative (Ileco) I, Ileco II, Ileco III, Guimaras Electric Cooperative (Guimelco), Capiz Electric Cooperative (Capelco), Antique Electric Cooperative (Anteco) and Aklan Electric Cooperative (Akelco) as a contingency measure to prevent the overloading of the Samboan-Amlan line 2 due to the preventive maintenance of one of the power plants in Panay and the unavailability of the Samboan-Amlan line 1. MLD was projected to last until 9 p.m. or earlier./PN
