2 more hours added to Davao power outages

DAVAO CITY—Power interruptions in the city would take two hours longer than they are now as a result of a continued decline in the supply of electricity from the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), according to an official of the city’s lone power distributor.

Ross Luga, corporate communications officer of Davao Light and Power Corp. (DLPC), said from the previous week’s two-hour brownouts a day, the Aboitiz-owned power utility is stretching the outage to four hours a day. It started on Thursday.

“This is necessary to avoid a breakdown of the entire distribution system which happens when the demand is higher than supply,” said Luga.

DLPC serves about 290,000 consumers here.

He said DLPC’s contract with NGCP was for the supply of 275 megawatts per day but the NGCP could supply only 163 megawatts, or a shortage of 112 megawatts.

Luga said NGCP declared a power supply deficit for the entire Mindanao of 130 MW.

The supply of electricity from the Bajada power plant, owned by DLPC, and the Sibulan and Talomo hydropower plants, owned by sister company Hedcor, is insufficient, according to Luga. Supply from Therma Marine, another sister company of DLPC, is also not enough.

DLPC, according to Luga, had also interrupted power to commercial users but this was not enough to make power supply sufficient. Allan Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao