MANILA, Philippines?Nearly two weeks after Tropical Storm ?Ondoy,? wrought havoc on Metro Manila, several areas which were severely hit by floods were once again plunged into darkness on Wednesday night.
The reason this time: A fire which damaged one of the transformers in the Dolores, Rizal substation.
According to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the operator of the country?s so-called electricity superhighway, the damage caused by the fire would continue to affect the eastern part of the metropolis, including San Juan, Pasig, Cainta and Marikina.
In particular, these areas will experience rotating brownouts which the power distributor, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), started implementing Thursday. The power outages, which will last at least three hours or more, will be implemented at least twice a day.
Meralco explained that without manual load dropping (rotating brownouts), the effect of the power outage could have been more massive, even leading to a system-wide blackout.
It added, however, that it did not know up to when the rotating brownouts would be implemented, saying this would depend on how soon NGCP would be able to resolve the problem.
Certain areas of Metro Manila and Rizal province were left without electricity just before 9 p.m. on Wednesday after one of the four 300-megavolt ampere (MVA) transformers in the Dolores substation caught fire.
As a result, the other transformers and Meralco?s five 115-kilovolt lines that draw power from the Dolores substation tripped.
The damage in the Dolores substation affected 13 Meralco substations, particularly those in St. Anthony, Manggahan, Parang, Masinag, Marikina, Santolan, Cainta, Shangri-la, Mandaluyong, Hillcrest, Dolores, Cubao bank no. 2 and New Teresa.
This resulted in electricity being cut off to parts of Mandaluyong, Pasig, Marikina, Taguig and Quezon City. Also affected were Cainta, Angono, Taytay, Binangonan, Antipolo, San Mateo and Rodriguez, all in Rizal province.
According to NGCP, it was still repairing the damaged equipment and would directly coordinate with Meralco to immediately restore electricity in affected areas.
