Blackouts will soon be a thing of the past - Transco

The National Transmission Co. (Transco) has vowed to make blackout "a thing of the past" by addressing transmission line problems including pilferage of high tension wires.

In a memorandum to Energy Secretary Vincent S. Perez, Transco president Asisclo T. Gonzaga said they have upgraded a number of transmission lines, such as the San Jose-Tayabas lines 1 & 2 which now carry 500 kilovolts of electricity and the Tayabas 500-kV lines which run from Kadampat substation at Labrador, Pangasinan to Dasmariñas substation at Cavite now in normal operating condition.

"With this, we are now confident of a robust, more stable and reliable Luzon grid," Gonzaga said in his memo to Perez.

Gonzaga said that prior to the actual loading, the two lines were energized at 230 kV.

"Electricity passing through the conductor at high voltage emits electro-magnetic induction that serves, in this case, as built-in anti-pilferage system that will make lawless elements think twice before even getting near, especialy now that the lines are energized at 500 kV," he said.

Gonzaga also expressed optimism that transmission line pilferage will be minimized if not totally stopped. He said the problem of transmission line constraint on the generating flow from Southern to Northern Luzon and vice-versa had also been addressed.

"Aside from the 500 kV link, we have also the back-up 230 kV lines in Northern and Southern Luzon," he said.

He said "we can now say that the probability of a Luzon-wide blackout caused by transmission line constraint and transmission line pilferage are already solved."

But then again if factors such as natural calamities or generation-related occurrences will be the cause of power failures, then there is nothing that Transco cao do, he added.

"What we can not be guaranteed right now is the black-start capability and the free governor system of generators that should be in operation when a bid power plant trips affecting the system frequency of the grid. This is more of a genco concern," he said.

The Transco official has suggested a possible solution to this problem. "We will try to address this problem with appropriate automatic-load-dropping (ALD) scheme that will automatically drop selected loads when a bid generator trips," he said.

This he said, will give more value to the transmission assets of Napocor.

"The commissioning of the Tayabas-San Jose lines for commercial operation is a milestone for it transforms the Luzon grid into a robust electric power system thereby raising the valuation of Transco assets," he said.

Transco, created under the Republic Act 9136, will handle all the transmission assets of Napocor.