Iloilo brownouts: Distributor points to ‘trip’ scheme

ILOILO CITY—Brownouts lasting from 30 minutes to an hour continued to hit this city in recent weeks, affecting thousands of consumers and commercial establishments.

But the energy supplier and distributor in the city are pointing fingers on the cause.

Engineer Randy Pastolero, vice president for operations of the Panay Electric Company (Peco), said three power outages in the past two months were triggered by the automatic activation of the special protecting scheme of the relay system of Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC).

The system automatically shuts off supply to Peco when it detects malfunctions and trips to protect PEDC’s system.

PEDC operates a 164-megawatt coal-fired power plant which supplies the bulk of the demand of Peco. Peak demand reaches 107 megawatts.

Peco is the sole power distributor in the city with about 58,000 consumers.

Pastolero said the activation of the protection system affects four of its substations that service Arevalo and Mandurriao districts and parts of downtown, Jaro and Lapaz districts.

He said the settings of the relay system should be fine-tuned to prevent frequent activation of the protection scheme.

“(The settings) might not be suitable for the current load because demand has significantly increased,” Pastolero said.

But engineer Nilo Madrid, PEDC plant manager, said the settings are always coordinated with Peco.

He said most of the power interruptions in the city are caused by problems within the Peco system.

Short duration brownouts are not triggered by the activation of the protection scheme in their relay system, according to Madrid.

He said they have tapped a consultant to study and help improve the system.

One option is to replace the relay system to ensure minimal glitches in power transmission.