Mindanao still awaiting explanation for power failure

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DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Mindanao business executives demanded an explanation Friday for the eight-hour Mindanao-wide power failure on Thursday, saying the government’s failure to say what actually happened could only increase people’s anxiety and lead to more losses for business.

“Until today we don’t know what was the cause of the brownout,” an agitated Manuel “Bobby” Orig, Aboitiz Power’s first vice president for Mindanao Affairs, complained to Energy Undersecretary Raul Aguilos, who was a guest at Friday’s general membership meeting of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industries Inc.

“We asked the NGCP (National Grid Corporation of the Philippines), we asked the DOE (Department of Energy) and they have different answers,” said Orig, dissatisfied over Aguilos’ explanation that the energy secretary had ordered the restoration of power first before determining what caused the blackout.

“We’d like to suggest that DOE constitute a unit to find out the cause of the major breakdown and disclose it to the public,” said Orig. “In that case, we address the immediate need to restore power, the need to stop the uncertainty already being felt by the people, and we address the need for the people to know.”

“They should have given us a time frame, and if they could not restore power back by that hour, they should have told us so that, at least, we could turn on our generation sets,” said Antonio dela Cruz, the chamber’s president.

But more than 24 hours after the blackout, the NGCP said it was still not able to determine what caused the interruption.

“NGCP is still determining the cause and will issue a statement when investigation is completed,” Cynthia Alabanza, NGCP communications chief, said. She said what they had determined was that “power transmission service has normalized.”

“All NGCP substations connected to backbone lines in Mindanao were connected to the grid as of 12:18 p.m., 27 Feb 2014,” Alabanza said in a text message to the Inquirer.

Despite the normalization of power transmission claimed by Alabanza, erratic power supply continued to afflict Mindanao on Friday.

In Davao del Sur, power would go off at hourly intervals, infuriating consumers who complained that the power fluctuations had caused their appliances to conk out.

The Cotabato Light and Power Co., owned by Aboitiz, in Cotabato City said that instead of an hourly power outage, it had implemented four to five hours of power interruption on Friday.

In an advisory, Colight said it was not certain about the return of normal supply because as of 1 p.m. Friday, its allocation from NGCP was continuously declining and had even reached 5 megawatts.

Anna Lea Lee-Nataño, Colight communications chief, said in a text message that the NGCP had told them the erratic power supply was being caused by the repair of the power supplier’s 210-megawatt station in Misamis Oriental.

“They should categorically respond to queries and should set a definite timeframe as to how long they can restore power, if such thing happens again,” Dela Cruz said.

“For eight hours they kept us waiting, so we did not know what to do with our people: either we ask them to go home, and they don’t earn anything, or we ask them to stay, and we are not producing anything, that’s losses to business,” said Sofronio “Boy” Jucutan, past president of the chamber.

“When the customer calls the DLPC (Davao Light and Power Company), the company has to answer immediately what is causing the blackout, so the first thing to be done should be to find out why there was a blackout,” said Anastacio Cubus, an engineer with long experience in power generation.

“But nobody really let the people know what happened;  either they are not interested, or they’re hiding something, so it creates conspiracy theories,” he said, referring to spreading speculation about the cause of the blackout.