Davao cooperative can’t use generators as it awaits ERC order

FILE PHOTO

DIGOS CITY — Despite having modular generator sets, the electric cooperative here could not use these after a power outage hit Mindanao Thursday dawn.

Godofredo Guya, manager of the Davao del Sur Electric Cooperative, said the utility could not just use the 16 modular gensets that were recently installed.

Guya said while the modular gensets — which can produce a total of 15 megawatts — can at least ease the power problem but its use still has to be decided upon by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

Davao del Sur’s power requirement for the more that 60,000 consumers is normally between 35-42 megawatts.

“The ERC has to issue an approval so we could bill the consumers when we use it,” Guya added.

He said Dasureco has asked the ERC to use the gensets in time of outages similar to Thursday’s but the order has not come out yet.

“A commissioner has informed us there was an imminent approval but we have to wait for the formal order before using them,” Danny Canastra, head of Dasureco’s member service department said.

Canastra said Dasureco could not tap power from Hedcor, which draws energy from the Sibulan River, because “we have no existing contact.”

Hedcor, a subsidiary of the Aboitiz Power Corporation, currently supplies power to the Davao Light and Power Company from its Tudaya I Hydroplant in Sibulan.

He said there was a proposal before to tap Tudaya I but Dasureco backed out due to pricing.

Hedcor sells its Tudaya-generated electricity at P7 per kilowatt hour, compared to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines’ P5 per kilowatt hour.

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