No end just yet to brownouts

CEBU, Philippines - Residents in franchise areas of the Visayan Electric Company (VECO) will have to deal with the rotational brownouts longer as there is no saying just yet when power will be completely restored.

"It's the absence of power supply and until it get fixed, the rotational brownouts will continue," said VECO spokesperson Theresa Sederiosa yesterday.

It can be recalled that VECO was forced to shut its entire system down when super typhoon Yolanda struck the Visayas morning on November 8, but it managed to restore electricity in some parts of its franchise areas late in the evening.

In a statement, the National Grid Power Corporation said most of the "Visayas backbone" has been restored using the emergency restoration system (ERS) as temporary replacement for the steel towers toppled by the typhoon.

There are two remaining lines yet to be restored - the Ormoc-Isabel 138-kV line in Leyte and the Panitan-Nabas 138-kV line in Panay where a majority of the towers were severely damaged. Most of the 69-kV lines that have been restored are now using new steel poles.

Still, despite the restoration of the power grids that connect Leyte to Cebu, the two power plants in Leyte, GreenCore and Unified Leyte, where VECO gets its 150 megawatt of total power demand of 430mw during peak hours, are not yet fully operational.

Due to such power deficiency, VECO said that they are left with no choice but to resort to rotational brownouts.

Sederiosa said these two power plants can only supply 40mw to VECO for now.

NGCP said that as of yesterday, the entire Visayas grid has zero power reserves.

NGCP has 23 transmission lines in Visayas and 624 structures that were damaged by the typhoon. —  (FREEMAN)