VECO warns of more brownouts

CEBU, Philippines - More areas within the franchise area of the Visayan Electric Company (VECO) will experience rotational brownouts.

Theresa Sederiosa, VECO spokesperson, said that their power shortage has increased yesterday by 70 megawatts (mw) from last week's  40mw.

This is because other power distributors were already back on line like the  Cebu Electric Cooperative (CEBECO) II in Northern Cebu as well as power distributors in Panay, Bacolod and Iloilo, said Sederiosa.

CEBECO's franchise area was offline for the past two weeks after their electrical poles were toppled down by typhoon Yolanda.

Its major lines or backbone lines were already back since Friday, although repairs in the lateral lines are still on-going.

Sederiosa said that last week, only three areas within their franchise area experienced rotational brownouts but the other day, it rose to four areas to experience the same.

She further said that it is possible that five areas will experience daily rotational brownouts for an average of one to two hours.

VECO earlier said that they will be having an estimated 150mw power shortage once other power distributors in other parts of the Visayas will be back on line.

Two power plants from  Leyte, the Tongonan Geothermal Power Plant and Unified Leyte, were damaged at the height of typhoon Yolanda.

VECO which sourced one third of its power from Leyte would continue to experience power shortage until these power plants as well as the transmission lines of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines will be fully restored.— (FREEMAN)