NGCP allots P200M to replace old wood poles

MANILA, Philippines - The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), the operator of the country’s power transmission highway, is spending nearly P200 million to replace its old wood poles with more durable steel poles, the company said yesterday.

The move comes after last month’s Luzon-wide power outage, which stemmed from a bush fire that hit NGCP’s transmission lines in Talisay, Batangas. The  bush fire started the power tripping but the Department of Energy said NGCP’s auto protection system should have prevented the outage from spreading.

In an effort to further strengthen and stabilize the power grid in the Visayas, NGCP is targeting to complete the replacement of more than 1,300 poles in Leyte, Samar, Cebu, Bohol, Negros and Panay.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), the country’s power regulator, earlier approved a budget of P196.7 million for the wood pole replacement.

Wood poles are used to transmit electricity with a maximum voltage of 69 kilovolts (kV).

Last year, NGCP finished the replacement of 1,104 wood poles also in the same areas.

The poles are old and no longer reliable with the construction dating back to the pre-privatization period when state-owned National Power Corp. was still managing the country’s transmission business.

“Some of the poles we inherited are more than 20 years old and are already prone to corrosion and decay which underscores the necessity to replace them with better materials. The replacement and rehabilitation of our 69-kV facilities is an on-going project of NGCP in the Visayas until 2015,” said NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza.

The project is part of NGCP’s comprehensive long-term plan to develop the Visayas grid. Improvements in the pipeline include interconnecting the region’s major islands, reinforcing existing transmission lines and substations, and replacing wood poles.

“NGCP is working on these developments in anticipation of future load growth in the Visayas. Since Visayas is prone to typhoons and earthquakes, we are prioritizing the construction of steel poles which can better withstand these disaster,” Alabanza added.