Mayor Albee Benitez is on top of the Bacolod power crisis, speaking to the media and the public when he jointly held a press conference with NEPC Chief Operations Officer Engineer Bailey Del Castillo yesterday. He is constantly in the loop, monitoring the ongoing repairs. It can be remembered that Mayor Albee was one of those who supported the Negros Power and CENECO JVA because he is well aware of the critical state of Bacolod City’s power substations. Read more.
Seven (7) Critical Substations Might Bring a Massive Bacolod Power Crisis
Negros Power is still awaiting its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) so that it can finally take over CENECO. With the CPCN, they can already implement the five-year rehabilitation and modernization plan that they have to improve the distribution utility in Bacolod City and Negros Occidental.
As per the company’s survey, the following Bacolod substations are in critical condition:
- Mountain View 1
- Mountain View 2
- Burgos
- Gonzaga
- Reclamation
- Alijis
- Sum-ag
But before they could start working, what we had feared since last year already happened: the Alijis substation power transformer had a massive leak and was rendered irreparable. Replacement could take at least 2 weeks and Negros Power knew what difficulties this could bring to the more than 40,000 consumers who are affected.
Albeit temporarily, they salvaged the situation by employing several techniques like power tapping, manual load dropping, changing some cables, and even borrowing a 10MVA mobile substation from their sister company in Iloilo. Despite the risks of transporting the mobile substation owned by MORE Power Iloilo, Negros Power President and CEO Roel Z. Castro said that they did what they had to restore power in affected areas.
Although it is already beyond their scope, Negros Power also provided three generator sets to BACIWA pumping stations so that the consumers can still have running water.
Negros Power: The Silver Lining
Despite the looming Bacolod power crisis, there is a silver lining, and that is the coming in of Negros Power. Despite not having a CPCN, they jumped in to help restore the power in affected areas.
One of the main reasons that Mayor Albee backed Negros Power was because he is gunning for SuperCity Bacolod and he knows that he cannot invite more investors with unstable electricity.
Read: Bacolod’s Underground Cabling: A Step Toward Becoming a SuperCity
“One of the reasons why we invited the new proponent is for them to do a modernization program to upgrade or replace our old equipment. There are 11 substations in the grid, of which seven are older than 25 years old. Hindi na ni ya mapuslan at a certain point. So, very imperative kinahanglan ta nga islan na gid sang bag-o and that is exactly what they tend to do,” Mayor Albee said.
“They will present in detail sa Council next week ang mga himuon nila nga mga modernization programs to upgrade the equipments. Aside from the transformer, they are planning to change mga electrical wires because not only it is daan, it’s bound to break, overloading, dyutay lang nga init we can experience some trip. So, all of this equipment and replaceable items have to be replaced immediately. So there’s a five-year program. They can advance most of the equipment that is needed so that we will have fewer problems. They are looking at investing 2.5 billion pesos.”
With the fresh investment that Negros Power is bringing in, they will be able to purchase new equipment to replace the old ones in our ailing substations and finally put the Bacolod power crisis to rest.
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The silver lining in all this is that now, we have Negros Power which has the financial capacity, manpower, and commitment to solve the Bacolod power crisis. If they are not in line to take over the distribution utility, we might go back to the Dark Ages pretty quick.