Friday, November 16, 2007 Province, Veco-franchise areas without power; Transco cites system trip-off
THE entire Cebu Province was without electricity for almost two hours yesterday afternoon when the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) Leyte-Cebu submarine cable tripped off.
Transco spokesperson Ben Ypil said there was sudden loss of power at 4:09 p.m. in the interconnection, which was reenergized at 4:36 p.m. or 29 minutes later.
He said Transco was investigating what happened and checking its system as of press time last night.
The incident was blamed on Transco because no problem was reported in the National Power Corp.’s power plants, especially the Leyte Geothermal Plant.
Ypil said there was an unconfirmed report that an overhead cable was struck by lightning, causing blackouts in the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid.
“This is still subject to investigation. We can’t speculate (on what really caused the blackout),” he said.
Priority areas
The Visayan Electric Co. (Veco), whose franchise area covers Carcar town in the south to Liloan town in the north, restored power by 97 percent around 6 p.m., or two hours after the blackout started.
Veco spokesperson Ethel Natera said that although independent power producer Cebu Private Power Corp. provides power to Veco, it only supplies 60 megawatts.
Veco’s franchise area requires 310 megawatts.
Natera said Veco prioritized areas where hospitals are located when Transco partially restored power by 5:40 p.m.
“We understand that power was gradually restored to protect its (Transco) system. But by 6 p.m., I was told that Veco was 97 percent back,” she said in a phone interview.
The last time a blackout happened was in April, when power supply was cut for almost two hours within a large part of Cebu Province, Negros and Panay islands.
The Leyte-Cebu submarine cable stopped supplying power following a technical trouble in three geothermal plants of independent supplier California Energy (CalEn) in Malitbog, Leyte.
Because supply distribution lost 220 megawatts, Veco that time was shifted to load shedding. (RHM)
