5 Western Visayas provinces hit by 10-hour blackout
ILOILO CITY, Iloilo, Philippines — The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has started an investigation to determine what caused the massive power interruption that hit five provinces of Western Visayas on Monday.
In a statement, the NGCP said it detected a “system disturbance” on Panay Island’s power grid at 11:24 a.m. on Monday, affecting supply in the Panay provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz and Iloilo as well as in the neighboring island province of Guimaras. Power was restored fully in these areas at past 9 p.m.
NGCP Panay spokesperson Reaghan Alcantara told the Inquirer on Tuesday that work was immediately done to restore power to all distribution utilities (DUs) across Panay and Guimaras.
While the NGCP already considered the issue resolved at 2:24 p.m. that day, there was only limited supply distributed among the DUs, forcing them to conduct manual load dropping which caused recurring power interruptions until Monday night.
“The reason why it took (us so) long (to restore the power), like in Iloilo City, was because there was only limited supply. That’s why even when the lines were already restored, but the load that we can throw to the lines was limited, we can only provide limited load,” Alcantara told the Inquirer.
“For example, in one area, they may require around 30 megawatts, but the load we could provide was only 5 MW to 10 MW … We would still need to provide [supply] to other customer areas around Panay to balance the load,” he added.
Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas, in a letter to NGCP officials on Tuesday, sought an explanation on the cause of the widespread power interruption.
“(The) said power interruption, absence of any advisory, brought inconvenience, not only to the Ilonggos in and outside their homes, but also affected the transactions in both public and private offices and businesses causing backlogs and missing deadlines on that day,” Treñas said.
