11-hour outage Saturday in Pangasinan

DAGUPAN CITY—Residents of 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.

In a notice sent to reporters here, Celso Sansano, manager of Pangasinan Electric Cooperative (Panelco) III, said the power interruption in 16 towns and Urdaneta City under his cooperative’s service area would be from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday.

The outage will also affect seven towns served by Central Pangasinan Electric Cooperative, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) based in San Manuel town said in a separate notice.

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 communications officer, said the power interruption was due to the scheduled annual preventive maintenance of its transmission lines.

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

Gaydowen said regular line maintenance along the San Manuel-Umingan and San Manuel-San Jacinto 69 kilovolt lines would be conducted simultaneously 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 to 7:30 a.m. and from 5:30 to 6 p.m. to facilitate the shifting of power sources. The three towns are served by Dagupan Electric Corp. Gabriel Cardinoza and Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon