VECO consumers spared from brownouts

CEBU, Philippines - Consumers in franchise areas of the Visayan Electric Company (VECO) are spared from brownouts despite the zero reserves in the Cebu-Negros-Panay power grid.

VECO spokesperson Theresa Sederiosa explained the company’s Interruptible Load Program has made this possible despite the 43 megawatt shortfall in supply.

Under the ILP, big power consumers or businesses operate on their own generation sets to spare other customers from longer and more frequent brownouts.

“Ang among mga custumers nga dagko og kunsumo opted to use their own generators instead of directly getting power from us. Mao na nga bisan naay power shortage, there is no brownout in our franchise area,” Sederiosa said.

VECO’s franchise area covers Cebu City to Consolacion town in the north and San Fernando in the south.

As posted on its website at 6 a.m. yesterday, the National Grid Corporation of the Phil ippines (NGCP) says the CNP grid or the Visayas grid had a system capacity of 1,477 mw but the system peak demand reached to 1,522 mw.

By 4 p.m., the Visayas grid incurred a -36mw deficiency in the morning and -65mw in the afternoon. It also projected a -45mw deficiency in the evening.

NGCP’s Weekly Outlook for Visayas from May 16 to May 22 shows that the Visayas grid will have a deficiency of -97mw today and -79mw by tomorrow.

In Cebu in particular, NGCP’s Weekly Outlook (May 16 to 22) shows it has zero power reserves from today until Thursday.

The CNP grid has been on red status alert since the other day after three power plants connecting the grid were shut down.

One of the three is the Cebu Energy Development Corporation in Toledo City, which has been out of the grid since May 16. It is expected to be back on the grid by tomorrow. It has a capacity of 86mw.

The other two power plants are the Leyte Geothermal Power Plant (36mw) and Panay Energy Development Corporation (86mw). Both power plants have shut down last May 18. LGPP is also expected to be back on May 22 while PEDC is expected to be back on May 25.

Department of Energy-7 Director Antonio Labios earlier said the broilers of CEDC and PEDC sustained damage. The gas turbine of LGPP was also damaged.

Both DOE and VECO have encouraged power consumers to conserve energy and turn appliances off when not in use, especially those that consume a huge amount of power. — (FREEMAN)