Leyte Transmission Line Trips 6-hour blackout cripples Visayas

CEBU, Philippines – A six-hour massive power outage hit Cebu and other parts of the Visayas region yesterday when the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines’ 230-kilovolt Marshalling to Tabango, Leyte Line II tripped off while transmission line I was on shutdown for maintenance.

Many Metro Cebu residents also suffered from water shortage for several hours because the lack of power has affected the pumping of water from the wells of the Metro Cebu Water District (see page 2 story).

Carmela R. Castillo, NGCP’s corporate communications officer for Visayas said the near blackout was experienced starting at 9:38 a.m. yesterday.

This prompted the agency to initiate “islanding operation” to restore power in the affected areas, specifically the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid that connects to the power line that tripped-off.

In “islanding” operation, Castillo explained that the individual islands will use their own available power plants to immediately restore power to critical areas while power using the interconnected grid is not yet available.

Castillo said they have yet to determine the cause of the power failure, quickly brushing aside insinuations that weather disturbance or possible earthquake could have caused it. There were no reports of such disturbances yesterday, she added.

However, she believes that the power interruption could be traced in either the transmission or the generation side, which their technicians are still further studying.

The two affected 230-KV transmission lines are being used to transmit power from Leyte to Cebu and the other island grids in the Visayas.

“At 2:43 p.m., the 230-KV transmission line I from Marshalling to Tabango was energized followed by Tabango to Talisay (Daanbantayan, Cebu) submarine power cable at 2:44 p.m.,” NGCP assistant vice president for Visayas Systems Operations Crispin D. Lamayan said.

But as of 2 p.m. yesterday, Cebu has already restored 25 percent of power which was generated by Salcon Power in Naga City.

VECO spokesperson Basti Lacson said that as of 3 p.m., the affected Leyte-Cebu transmission line is already up and running. He said VECO’s franchise area was fully energized by around 4 p.m.

On the other hand, Cebu City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem, who chairs the City Council committee on transportation and energy, saw an opportunity to call for need to put up more power plants in Cebu.

“The long loss of power in Cebu today caused by the technical problem of the geothermal plants in Leyte only reinforces the clear importance of having enough power generated in Cebu as this is not the first time it happened from the same cause. We were just lucky today is a weekend day. If it happened on a weekday, the loss of business would have been huge,” the councilor said.

In May 2005, a widespread blackout also hit the entire Visayas region and some parts of Luzon when a 4.2 magnitude earthquake hit Leyte province causing the automatic trip-off of power plants located in the province.

The geothermal power fields in Tongonan, Leyte supply power to Visayas and Luzon regions.

In the whole CNP grid, Cebu was the most affected because it is dependent on the power supply from Leyte, having few existing power producers that supply its power needs.

Jun Canton, spokesperson of the Philippine Airlines said that despite of the power outage, none of their flights was cancelled as they have their own standby power for the computers and lights.

Robert Go, who owns the Prince Warehouse, a chain of retail stores, said that the brownout was unaanounced and that is very detrimental for business.

Go, who is also the director of the Philippine Retailers Association said that he cannot quantify the amount of damage that it has cause to business because of such brownout.

“Having a brownout such like this drives away foreign investors. This is not good for our country,” Go added.

Yesterday’s long brownout prompted people to flock to the malls to seek “refuge” from the hot weather.

“Grabe gyud ang ka-alimuot sa balay. Walay aircon, walay electric fan. Mao na’ng naa mi sa mall nagpabugnaw,” says Jennifer Ann Almirin, a bank executive. — /WAB (THE FREEMAN)