BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya—An eight-hour power outage struck the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Ifugao on Monday night.
In a statement, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said power tripped at its 40 megavolt ampere substation in Barangay (village) Busilac here at 7:56 p.m. due to a “technical failure.” Power was restored at 4:05 a.m. on Tuesday.
The outage affected more than 75,000 households in the areas serviced by the Nueva Vizcaya Electric Cooperative Inc. (Nuvelco) and about 34,000 more in nine towns supplied by the Ifugao Electric cooperative (Ifelco).
“It is hard to imagine how we still suffer from brownouts this long when there are no typhoons or other weather disturbances that could have caused it. This is clearly poor service,” said Erlinda Villalobos, mother of three, of Solano town.
Residents used social media to vent their ire on NGCP, with many describing the discomfort and inconvenience because of the lack of electricity.
Many college students, who were reviewing for a major examination, complained over how long it took for power to be restored. Alfonso Tactacan of Bambang town also decried the losses he and other meat and fish traders suffered.
Lilibeth Gaydowen, NGCP spokesperson, said their technicians have yet to submit an official report on the cause of Monday’s power interruption.
Initial assessment, however, pointed to a busted rectifier and a resistor installed on the support equipment of the Bayombong transformer as possible causes of the outage, she said.
“Power tripped, as the system’s precautionary mechanism, when a technician shifted power from one source to another because he noticed that the supply dipped abnormally,” she said.
The NGCP had to dispatch a five-member team of technicians from its district office in Santiago City in Isabela, about a two-hour drive to the substation here, to work overnight to repair the problem, Gaydowen said. Melvin Gascon, Inquirer Northern Luzon
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