Sudden change in weather blamed: Rains, kite cause more brownouts

First it was an earthquake. Then it was the sudden change in weather. And a kite.

After a relatively mild earthquake in Leyte triggered Wednesday's eight-hour blackout that crippled the entire Visayas and parts of Luzon and forced some 10.8 million people to agonize under sweltering 33-degree Celsius summer heat, mostly without water, sudden rains and an errant kite yesterday caused some power distribution equipment to fail, again plunging wide areas of Metro Cebu into darkness.

And because water is drawn from underground sources by power-driven pumps, the taps in the affected areas similarly went dry.

Power officials were, however, quick to say the two successive power outages were related to each other.

Ethel Natera, spokeswoman of power utility Visayan Electric Company which serves Metro Cebu, yesterday said the abrupt change in the weather resulted in the failure of some equipment.

" The other day ( Wednesday ) and during the past days, we have had very hot weather. This morning ( Thursday ), it suddenly rained. The suddent change in the weather caused problems in our equipment that resulted in widespread area problems, " Natera told The Freeman.

The whole southern part of Metro Cebu and some areas in downtown Cebu City were among the most affected. And because well fields of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District were mostly situated in Jaclupan, Talisay City, water sourced from this area stopped flowing when the pumps stopped running.

Natera said VECO sent emergency crews working overtime, deploying extra teams to address all complaints of power loss by consumers and to check and monitor other pieces of equipment.

The sudden rains, which begun early yesterday morning, were induced by a storm that was closing in on Samar and Leyte. They affected a piece of equipment at corner V. Rama and M. Velez in Guadalupe, forcing the power to trip automatically, leaving some areas in Guadalupe and downtown with no power.

The much wider power interruption that affected southern Metro Cebu, Natera said, was caused by a kite that got entangled in power lines near the VECO substation in Pardo. The power outage started early, at 5:40 a.m. but was quickly restored. About two hours later, power went out again in the same area, causing eight water pumps of MCWD in Jaclupan to shut down.

Tertuliana Andaya, MCWD information officer, said concessionaires in the entire south of Metro Cebu and parts of the downtown area in Cebu City experienced lack of water starting at past 8 a.m.

Natera said outages that struck the port area in the afternoon were caused by transient faults which occur when circuits touch one another in strong winds. But she said these interruptions were only for short durations.

Meanwhile, the National Transmission Corporation denied reports ( not in The Freeman ) that Wednesday's earthquake damaged its transmission lines, resulting in the shutting off of power and causing the massive blackout that crippled the entire Visayas and parts of Luzon.

TransCo information officer Benjamin Ypil said all their facilities are free from damage and everything was back to normal operations as of past 6 p.m. last Wednesday.

" There was no damage to our facilities, including our overhead and underground cables, " Ypil said.

TransCo said the blackout last Wednesday was caused by the automatic protection shutdown of the geothermal plants of the National Power Corporation in Tongonan, Leyte where a 4.2 magnitude earthquake was centered.

It said the sudden loss of the power supply from Leyte caused a cascading effect on other plants in the entire Visayas grid which shut down after their own safety devices activated to protect themselves from overload.

Leandro Mendez Jr., TransCo Visayas assistant vice president, said the entire system's capacity as of yesterday was placed by their regional control center in Banilad at 1,032 megawatts, with a forecast peak demand of 966 MW from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.