Wednesday, April 23, 2008 Ceneco warns of more power outages By Gil Alfredo B. Severino
CENTRAL Negros Electric Cooperative Inc. (Ceneco) has announced another round of load shedding, power interruptions or unscheduled brownouts in the coming days.
In a statement, Ceneco said it was informed that the Palinpinon geothermal generator 3 maintenance works was completed at least five days ahead of its schedule on April 23.
The Cebu geothermal plant 1, however, is presently not operational and needs repair, as well as the Panay diesel power plant, which is operating at a very limited power capacity. As such, consumers would experience more load shedding shutoff or unscheduled brownouts until these two are completed, Ceneco said.
Engineer Erlo Sajo, Ceneco operations and maintenance manager, however, could not say the exact date of the Panay and Cebu plants' rehabilitation.
"Organizationally, only Transco Mansilingan has access to information regarding the operation of generator sets run by the National Power Corporation (Napocor). Transco Mansilingan, in turn, gets its information from its regional area control center (ACC)," he explained. "This could be the reason why Ceneco cannot effectively inform the public ahead because of Transco's organizational limitation."
He added: "Only Transco has access to information with regard to Napocor's generator set. The cooperatives are at the receiving end but get all the blame when sudden brownouts occur."
Meanwhile, Ceneco continues to source more power from local generators.
It has already signed a contract with the First Farmers Holdings Inc. for a five-megawatt supply and would soon be buying additional supply from the Philbio biogas digester facilities.
