Iloilo, Antique reel from blackout

ILOILO CITY—It was no sound sleep for thousands of residents of Iloilo and Antique who had to endure the sweltering summer heat without electric fans or air-conditioning units after a blackout hit the two provinces from Monday night until daybreak.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has yet to come up with an official report on the cause of the power outage. But Jose Rey Maleza, supervising service research specialist of the DOE Visayas Field Office, said it was due to a tripping off of the

82-megawatt Unit I of a coal-fired power plant of Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC).

Maleza said the break in the unit’s circuit due to a mechanical or technical fault triggered the automatic shutdown of the 82-MW Unit II.

It eventually disrupted the supply of other power plants in Panay with a total capacity of 215.8 MW. These include

45.4 MW from Panay Power Diesel Plant (PPDP) in Dingle town, Iloilo, and 6.4 MW from the biomass power plant by Central Azucarera de San Antonio in Passi City, also in Iloilo.

Also affected were three biomass plants in Negros Occidental province, with a combined capacity of 4.8 MW.

The areas reeling from the blackout included Iloilo City, under Panay Electric Co., and the rest of the province covered by Iloilo Electric Cooperative (Ileco) 1, Ileco 2 and Ileco 3, and neighboring Antique under Antique Electric Cooperative.

Voltage fluctuation was experienced in the other Panay provinces of Capiz and Aklan.

Power was gradually restored when supply from the Visayas grid started flowing in at 8:02 p.m. from the diesel power plants of PPDP and at 12:42 a.m. on Tuesday from Panay Power Corp.

Maleza said there were no reported problems in the transmission lines but for the automatic shutdown mechanisms to protect other plants and the lines.

PEDC was investigating a possible tube leak in Unit I, he said.

Most of the power supply was restored before 6 a.m. on Tuesday, but areas in Iloilo under Ileco 1 were still in the dark as of 5:30 a.m., due to what Maleza said was a malfunctioning in the San Miguel-Sta. Barbara station of Ileco 1.