North Cotabato suffers daily brownouts anew

KIDAPAWAN CITY -- The province of North Cotabato has experienced anew power outages from 30 minutes to one hour due to reduced capacity of the existing power plants in Mindanao grid, an official from an electric cooperative here said.

Vicente Baguio, spokesperson for the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco), said that as of yesterday, Monday, the power deficiency in Mindanao was pegged at 370 megawatts (MW), at least 40 MW higher than last week.

On Thursday, the load curtailment in the Mindanao grid, sources from Cotelco said, was increased from 200 MW to 300 MW due to reduced capability of Pulangi-4 hydroelectric power plant brought about by low water inflow to its reservoir.

The Pulangi-4 plant is located in Maramag town in Bukidnon province.

In May, the plant underwent rehabilitation for one month. The rehabilitation, sources said, cost the state-run National Power Corporation some P11 million.

Despite the rehabilitation, however, the plant's capacity continues to reduce, Baguio said.

Of the 255-MW installed capacity of the plant, it was reduced to 200 MW due to wear-and-tear.

"This reduced capacity is the main reason why we're again experiencing series of brownouts since last week of July," Baguio said.

North Cotabato had suffered six to eight hours of daily brownouts from March until May this year, which caused uproar from several civil society groups, especially from the business community.

When asked if power consumers in North Cotabato would again experience the same situation this August, Baguio said that with power they bought from the Therma Marine Inc. (TMI) of the AboitizPower, the province won't suffer long brownouts.

Baguio said that the province will enjoy 36 MW of power supply daily. Cotelco has signed a 28-MW contract with the (National Grid Corporation of the Philippines) NGCP plus an additional eight megawatts from the TMI.

"At a maximum, the province will suffer 30 minutes to one hour brownouts daily," Baguio said.