VECO assures power on poll day

CEBU, Philippines - The Visayan Electric Company, Inc. assures that they will implement their own contingency measures during election day to ensure that there will be no power interruption as the country goes full-swing with poll automation.

“This will be similar to our contingency measures in the last elections. We also have a contingency measure in case of any eventuality,” VECO spokesperson Ethel Natera told The FREEMAN.

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, formerly the National Transmission Corporation, has likewise assured the Commission on Elections that there will be enough power supply on May 10, 2010.

VECO is the second largest electric utility in the Philippines and serves the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Talisay as well as the five municipalities of the greater part of Metro Cebu - Liloan, Consolacion, Minglanilla, Naga and San Fernando.

Its franchise service covers an area of about 672 square kilometers with an estimated population of 1.73 million.

Department of Energy regional director Antonio Labios, in an earlier interview, also warned of more power outages because of the region’s dwindling power reserves set to worsen for the rest of the year.

Labios said that with the onset of the Christmas season, power demand continues to rise which is adding more strain to the already tight power supply in the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid.

Cities in Cebu and some municipalities in the province have already experienced a series of rotating brownouts due to tight power supply as some power plants either tripped-off or are producing less electricity than their capacity.

Some power plants supplying electricity to the grid also underwent preventive maintenance.

On the other hand, KEPC-SPC Power Corporation corporate secretary and legal counsel Guillermo Dabbay, Jr. said that soon, the problem of rotating brownouts in Cebu would be a thing of the past when the two power plants begin supplying 200 megawatts of electric power.

Dabbay said that the additional 200mw baseload from the KSPC plants would ease the present crisis experienced by Cebu and power the local economy into the next decades.

Business leaders have already expressed concerned over the “rotating brownout” scenario as this has already incurred business losses on their part. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/MEEV (THE FREEMAN)