Barely a month away from the country’s mid-term elections and despite the government’s promise of sufficient electricity supply, power consumers in Metro Manila and a large swathe of Luzon have been tormented with widespread rolling brownouts lasting one-hour duration in each of the affected areas.
Metro Manila areas with power interruptions were Quezon City, Valenzuela City, Navotas City, Caloocan City, and Malabon City, and the provinces affected were Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Bulacan, with the rotating brownouts starting from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
According to Manila Electric Co. spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga, the areas within their franchise area plagued with service outages had been from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. for the first batch, then 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., and the last stretch was 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Rolling brownouts have been raised for electricity consumers in the Luzon grid due to “zero reserve in the system,” according to the notice sent by system operator National Grid Corp. of the Philippines early yesterday – and the last one to trigger that was the unplanned outage of one unit of the Sual plant in Pangasinan.
In a statement, the Philippine Independent Power Producers Association Inc., the group of the faltering generation companies, indicated that “our members are closely coordinating with the Department of Energy to provide real-time updates on their power plants’ condition.”
The power firms have remained tightlipped, however, and have instead tossed to the Energy department the responsibility of explaining as to the stature of the plants on forced outages and even the country’s overall power supply situation. (Myrna Velasco)
