ILOILO CITY ? The Visayas will continue to experience rotational brownouts due to the maintenance service of major plants supplying the Visayas grid.

The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) said that as of February 10, only Unit 2 of the Mahanagdong geothermal plant in Leyte with a capacity of 60 megawatts had resumed operations.

The plant?s 60-MW Unit 1 was still undergoing maintenance, according to Belinda Sales-Canlas, NGCP corporate communications officer for the Visayas.

The 120-MW plant underwent preventive maintenance starting January 30 and was set to resume full operations this week.
The power supply of the Visayas grid also dropped because of the shutting down of the 50-MW Cebu Thermal Power Plant 1 (CTPP1) also for preventive maintenance.

The CTPP1 is expected to be operational by February 23, according to Canlas.

Power distributors have resorted to load-shedding on a rotational basis in their service areas because of the insufficient supply, said engineer Wilfredo Billena, general manager of the Iloilo Electric Cooperative 1 and spokesman of the Panay-Guimaras Power Supply Consortium.

Billena said hour-long brownouts hit areas during peak hours between 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. after they reduced supply alternately among their supply feeders. A feeder covers from one to several towns.

Even before the preventive maintenance of the power plants, the Visayas has been suffering from power shortages especially when the geothermal power plants in Leyte, where the Visayas grid gets the bulk of its power supply, or the transmission lines connecting the grid malfunctioned.

The energy industry stakeholders in the Visayas have been pushing for the fast-tracking of the construction of power plants in the Visayas, especially in Western Visayas, the tail-end of the power grid, to stabilize the energy supply.