Accountability sought in Panay blackout

MANILA, Philippines — The provincial government of Iloilo is seeking accountability over the region-wide power outage in Western Visayas that crippled the islands of Panay and Guimaras as well as some areas of Negros after the New Year.

Iloilo Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. yesterday said the province is planning to file cases against those responsible for the blackouts.

“We will examine our laws, because there is always a way of extracting accountability, especially because we are talking here of a public utility. Public utility is different from ordinary corporations. We will pursue that. The damage to the province is huge, to the households, the lost opportunities and the businesses of our fellow citizens,” Defensor said.

He said the agenda of an emergency meeting held on Jan. 4 focused on the power crisis and the directives issued by President Marcos in 2023 concerning the power sector.

The meeting was attended by officials of the Department of Energy (DOE), National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), power sector and local executives.

“If we go back to the directives of the President in 2023, we could see that none of the five directives was followed,” Defensor said.

He said that during the meeting, the NGCP was directed to perfect the management of the grid and complete the backbone of Phase 3 of the Cebu-Negros-Panay power structure.

“The grid is sensitive. Similar incidents will occur as it will trip as a matter of natural course. There is really a problem as based on the meeting, there were two causes of the tripping. It could be internal or from the grid. There was a two-hour lead time before the seven power plants simultaneously broke down on Jan. 2,” Defensor said.

“The same thing happened in (August) 2023. We called for the same meeting, the same participants. After that meeting, there were five directives from the President. Number 1, the NGCP should be transparent to and engage the stakeholders. The DOE has the same complaint. They don’t see transparency and there was a problem with the data,” he said.

Defensor said it was agreed during the August 2023 meeting that the Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone, together with its artillery structure, should be completed.

He said he has been invited as resource person to the hearing of the House committee on energy on Jan. 11.

Senate inquiry

Meanwhile, Sen. Chiz Escudero said the DOE should have known about the shutdown of the power plants that caused the blackouts in Western Visayas.

Escudero said that DOE officials should be ready to answer the senators’ queries in  a hearing set on Wednesday.

“The shutdown was unscheduled; the DOE should know about it. It’s not possible to just shut down the plants because the Philippines’ excess power is thin,” he said.

While Malacañang and the DOE blamed the outage on the NGCP, Escudero said the task of the grid operator was just to transmit and not to generate power.

“From the generating company, the NGCP’s only job is to send electricity to the distribution firm, which sends electricity to consumers,” he said.

Escudero stressed the need for a thorough investigation of the Panay power crisis, saying the blame for the widespread blackout should not be pinned on just one person.

He said the objective of the Senate inquiry is not to pin blame, but to look at measures that will ensure that the blackout will not happen again. — Cecille Suerte Felipe