Toughing it out for the holidays

The Energy Secretary’s promise that power would be restored in typhoon-hit areas by Christmas eve was too good to be true.

This was confirmed by the Visayan Electric Company (Veco) pronouncement that brownouts in Metro Cebu would continue until supply from Leyte is normalized when power plants are repaired, a job that private power producers can’t even committ to a timetable.

No one in the meeting called at the Capitol to assess the “crisis” could speak up when asked about deadlines.

The meeting called by Cebu province officials also showed that the interruptible load program (ILP) implemented by big companies in Cebu was a big advantage.

It helped Veco, a distribution utility, save 30 megawatts on its limited supply and reduce the duration of outages to one to two hours.

Without the program, the brownouts would easily run to four hours a day.

With the holidays in full swing and the Sinulog just around the corner, power consumption in Cebu will be at a peak in December and January.

Households, offices, stores and companies will have to make sacrifices as repairs are made on damaged power plants and transmission lines in Leyte.

There are many ways to conserve energy.

Switch off idle appliances. Plan ahead for power-intensive tasks. Use fewer lights and air-conditioners in a room.

It may mean fewer Christmas lights but the short-term loss would mean wider gains for all.

For its part, Veco’s text and daily website advisories about the power outlook show a good effort at customer service.

But since the daily power forecast of supply from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines is sent on the day itself, it’s difficult to anticipate which Veco power station will be affected and then alert which cluster of customers to expect a brownout at what time.

Without advance information, the public can’t plan a brownout-free day or plan around a power outage that can strike at any time.

It’s a frustrating situation. Is there a better way?

Commercial establishments which cope by firing up their own generator sets will eventually pass on the extra cost to customers.

For now, Metro Cebu residents are bearing the inconvenience, knowing that in other parts of the island electricity is absent in the rural areas for even longer periods.

Doing without electricity for one to two hours a day will become a habit. Stretch that to a way of life: Veco officials say brownouts will continue till October next year.