23 Pangasinan towns, Urdaneta to lose power due to coops’ maintenance shutdown

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines -– Residents in 23 towns and a city in the eastern and central parts of Pangasinan province will experience an 11-hour power interruption on Feb. 1 as two cooperatives undertake a maintenance shutdown in their service areas.

The power interruption in 16 towns and Urdaneta City within the service area of the Pangasinan Electric Cooperative III (Panelco III), will be from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, according to an announcement sent by Panelco III manager Celso Sansano to reporters here.

The outage will also affect seven towns served by the Central Pangasinan Electric Cooperative (Cenpelco), according to a separate announcement made by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) based in San Manuel town.

The power outage will hit the towns of Mangaldan, San Manuel, Binalonan, Pozorrubio, Laoac, Asingan, Mapandan, Villasis, Rosales, Balungao, Sto. Tomas, Alcala, Bautista, Bayambang, Basista, Tayug, San Nicolas, Natividad, Sta. Maria, Umingan, San Quintin, Sison and Malasiqui and Urdaneta City.

Lilibeth Gaydowen, NGCP corporate communication officer, said the power interruption would be due to the scheduled annual preventive maintenance of its transmission lines.

She said the NGCP would also test a new 100-megavolt ampere (MVA) transformer and replace its lightning arresters.

Gaydowen said regular line maintenance along the San Manuel-Umingan and San Manuel-San Jacinto 69 kilovolt line would be conducted simultaneous with Panelco III’s maintenance and testing of their instrument transformers.

Short power interruptions will also occur in the towns of Manaoag, San Fabian and San Jacinto from 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. to facilitate the shifting of power source. The three towns are served by the Dagupan Electric Corp.

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