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Friday, July 27, 2007
No outages in Cebu: Power ‘supply enough’
CEBU CITY -- Power shortages in Manila will not happen in Cebu because the province’s electricity is sourced mostly from geothermal and diesel plants, Visayan Electric Company (Veco) spokesperson Ethel Natera said Thursday.
Manila and nearby provinces are suffering rotating brownouts because of low supply from power plants. Major power stations also failed to cope with the sudden spike in demand for electricity.
Arroyo Watch: Sun.Star blog on President Arroyo
Ben Ypil, former spokesman of the National Power Corporation (Napocor) and now with the Philippine Transmission Corporation (Transco), said that what happened in Metro Manila will not be repeated in Cebu.
Ypil said Napocor in Metro Manila uses hydro-electric plant at the Angat Dam. With water levels low because of unusually sunny weather during what should have been the country’s rainy season, power supply was affected.
In Central Visayas, Ypil said that only one hydro-electric plant, located in Hanopol, Balilihan, Bohol, is operating. The plant, however, is small and can only supply power to a few towns.
But even if the Hanopol plant will be closed, supply will not be affected because Bohol and Cebu are already interconnected with the Leyte geothermal power plants.
In Cebu, Natera said that Veco gets it supply of electricity from Cebu Private Power Corporation, which is using diesel engines, and Napocor, which sources power from geothermal plants in Leyte and coal stations.
She said that this is the reason why even if Cebu will run out of water, the supply of power will not be affected.
“As far as we are concerned, there is no advise from NPC that they lack power to supply to us or any request for rotation of electricity distribution to consumers”, Natera said.
Still, Cebu City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem urged people to conserve energy.
“I asked both Veco and Napocor and they told me that there is no problem yet with our power supply, unlike Manila which has eight-hour brown-outs due to lack of coal and hydro-electric power. We are in a much better shape than Manila,” he said.
Jakosalem said Cebu’s other sources for power are the diesel-powered plants of East Asia Utilities Corp. in Mactan Island and the coal-feed plants of Salcon Power Corporation in Naga and Mirant Philippines in Toledo City.
But, Jakosalem said, Cebuanos should always conserve electricity as a pro-active measure because nobody really knows what would happen next.
He said he will try asking Salcon and Mirant for the status of their plants just to ensure that Cebu really has a stable source of power.
If the plants of the two companies shut down or are not reliable, Cebu would have “just barely enough, with no surplus” energy for consumers.
The problem that the City Council committee on energy, transportation, communication and other utilities chairman see, however, is the supply of coal for power plants here.
He said Cebu’s main source of coal is Australia, as local production could not satisfy the demand.
But Japan and China right now have bigger needs for coal and that the local power providers’ contracts with the Australian suppliers are just on short-term basis.
“That’s a problem because the suppliers would naturally go to the best price, and Japan and China right now pays higher for the coal,” he explained.
President Arroyo, in her State of the Nation Address last Monday, had announced that two power barges would be sent to Cebu in the near future in anticipation of a projected power shortage.
Jakosalem said that although power is ensured because of the barges, its cost is definitely higher compared to sourcing it from the plants. (EOB & RHM of Sun.Star Cebu)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Davao. (July 27, 2007 issue)
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