THE Philippine's third largest electric distribution, Davao Light and Power Company, Inc. provides President Duterte’s hometown, Davao City, with reliable source of energy in the next coming years.
This AboitizPower subsidiary also serves the Davao del Norte Areas of Panabo City and neighboring municipalities of Carmen, Dujali and Sto. Tomas.
Davao Light embraces the values of integrity, teamwork, innovation, responsibility, and service excellence.
Aligned with these values, the local distributor ensures its customers dependable service. It has contracted with big suppliers such as the state-owned National Power Corporation and the coal-fired Therma South, Inc.
According to its spokesperson, assistant vice president Ross Luga, the power firm aims to provide safe, reliable, and uninterrupted power supply to the customers.
Enjoying an annual compound growth rate of 3.94 percent, Davao Light now has a customer base of 367,782. Majority or 86 percent are residential customers followed by commercial comprising 12 percent. Less than one percent are streetlight customers, mostly under local government unit accounts. The remaining are small and large industrial customers.
With the robust Davao economy, more investments have come in. Growing steadily year on year, the current peak demand from 354 MW in 2015 increased to 380 MW by 2016. In 2017, it is forecasted to reach 410 MW.
Known for its efficiency, Davao Light has among the lowest systems loss in the industry, which is below the government-mandated cap of 8.5 percent.
Davao Light employs state-of-the-art and cutting edge technology to further improve its service. In its systems operations it uses Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada), which allows engineers to remotely control switches in its substations and along sub-transmission and feeder lines. It also uses Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) wherein data and voice ride on the same cables.
As Mindanao was plagued by the extended El Nino phenomenon, most areas in the island suffered rotational brownouts up to five hours durations.
Davao Light managed the situation by optimizing power from its energy suppliers. It also operated its standby diesel plant in Bajada. It also received cooperation from its Interruptible Load Program (ILP) participants. Instead of drawing power from the distribution network, these big companies operated their own generators, which spared up to 4,000 consumers from brownouts for every 1 MW of use.
As a law abiding corporate citizen, Davao Light has consistently garnered the recognition for being one of the largest business taxpayers of Davao City.
Davao Light has successfully undertaken the first ever Underground Distribution System (UDS) in Davao City. The company will continue to undertake UDS improvements on an annual basis to help improve the livability as well as contribute to a more robust network.
The company was instrumental in establishing the Davao City 911 or the Davao City Central Communication and Emergency Response Center. Davao Light designed and developed the first software being used by the emergency response center, with the company’s mapping database utilized to locate callers during emergencies.
In 1996, the company, in collaboration with local government units, started a street lighting project using sodium lights to enhance tourism and at the same curb criminality. The project has made Davao City one of the best-lit cities in the country.
The company gives back to its host communities by being a socially responsible. It assists in the nation building by donating school buildings, providing scholarships to deserving students and boosting IT proficiency through computer donations. Its own employees pay it forward by doing electrical house wiring and building homes in the Gawad Kalinga projects.
Davao Light cares for the environment. Its Community Relations team manages the eight-hectare outdoor biodiversity Abotiz Cleanergy Park at Sitio Punta Dumalag in Matina Aplaya. The facility features, Habitat Conservation for the critically endangered Hawksbill turtle, Marine Species Enhancement, Seedling Nursery and Botanical Garden, Eco-trail Boardwalk with Observation Decks across Mangroves, Coastal Forest Trees with Information Tags and Automated Weather Station for Localized Weather Forecasting.
Through all of these outcomes, Davao Light and Power Company proves President Duterte’s city, a place of reliable source of energy and a trusted partner for the benefit of the people. (Jossan May Luga/AdDU intern)