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The National Transmission Corp. (TransCo) has issued
an apology to electricity consumers in Mindanao following a series
of power interruptions in the region recently.
“We are truly sorry for the
inconvenience and problems brought by the repetitive outages to the
people in Mindanao. Notwithstanding our operational vigilance,
things like this happen on rare occasions. But we know this is not
an excuse for taking long to solve the problem. We owe it to the
consumers to give them reliable power,” Arthur N. Aguilar, TransCo
president & CEO, said.
Technical investigations
conducted by TransCo revealed that the power outages were caused by
a malfunctioning transmission line protective relay at the Kibawe
substation in Bukidnon. The said protective equipment caused
adjacent incoming and outgoing transmission lines to trip.
Because of this a large part of
southern Mindanao lost electricity at about 8:19 a.m. on Wednesday.
The areas include the provinces of Davao del Sur and Norte,
Sarangani, South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, North Cotabato,
Maguindanao and Shariff Ka-bunsuan, the cities of General Santos,
Cotabato, Tacurong, Kidapawan and Koronadal.
To alleviate the provinces power
woes, the Davao Light and Power Corporation had to operate their
embedded Bajada Diesel Plant in Davao City to temporarily restore
power in these areas. Power was restored at about 4 p.m. in the same
day.
To prevent a recurrence of the
problem, Aguilar said he has ordered a thorough rechecking of all
the remaining 68 protective relays installed in strategic
substations throughout Mindanao despite the fact that these
equipment have been checked earlier as part of their preventive
maintenance schedules.
Meanwhile, Energy Secretary
Angelo Reyes advised Aguilar “to take necessary measures to see to
it that there would be no malfunction of any kind again in the
future.”
“Efforts should be exerted to
assure customers that these incidents will not happen again,” he
said.
--Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo
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