Learn from past blackouts

Last Aug 20 in the evening the whole province of Cebu, Leyte-Samar and Bohol experienced a blackout that was so inconvenient most especially to the people that were working from home.

This was not the first time that a blackout of this magnitude happened in the Visayas due to a lighting strike, this happened in the early 2000s. Also in that same decade, we experienced blackouts due to earthquakes and typhoons severing the transmission lines.

It is therefore unfathomable that despite everything that had happened, our supposedly modern energy infrastructure is still suffering to collapse to what is already regular weather and other natural events. We have still not introduced technology and infrastructure to protect the grid and the customers and we still continue to just shrug of these events as unfortunate and it is in fact, very much preventable.

We blame the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines and the electric cooperatives and distribution companies. They have been given enough time to anticipate and prevent such grid breakdowns or the least, have contingency measures to cushion the effect of these already regular natural occurrences. We consumers deserve nothing less.

POWER is calling on the NGCP and other energy players to get their acts together and fulfill their mandate to the Filipino people. They need to work on building redundancies for the lines to make sure power is supplemented in case of interruptions.

They should learn from the past and know that they need to be more competent. POWER will continue to watch over them to ensure that they are doing their job and they are accountable for the Filipino people.

Jaydar Medrozo

Lead Campaigner

People's Oversight Watchdog for Energy Reforms (POWER)