- GILBERT P. BAYORAN
MORE Power, the sister company of Negros Electric and Power Corp. (Negros Power), is sending its 10MVA mobile substation from Iloilo City to Bacolod City to provide additional load capacity to minimize rotational load dropping.
Its spokesperson Jonathan Cabrera said that the mobile substation is expected to arrive on Saturday (Aug. 24).
It is also expected to supply power to the Alijis feeders by Tuesday next week, he added.
The power outages, which took place after the 37MVA power transformer at the Alijis Substation got busted, affected about 42,000 registered consumers, according to Negros Power, which recently took over the operation of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco).
Negros Power blamed it to past incidents of overloading.
As an interim solution, Negros Power engineers rerouted and connected the feeder lines from Alijis Substation to nearby substations and feeders, providing a temporary power supply of around 32 megawatts to the affected areas.
To prevent overloading, Negros Power said it will implement manual load dropping as a precautionary measure to abort possible unscheduled power interruptions.
Cabrera said that an 18MVA power transformer is now being assembled to replace the busted transformer at Alijis Substation, which will take one to two weeks.
In a statement, Negros Power appealed for understanding from all affected consumers during the reconfigurations, assuring them of ongoing efforts to restore normal operations and ensure a consistent power supply while addressing the challenges at the Alijis Substation.
Cabrera said that the P2-billion rehabilitation and modernization plan is being readied to kick off by September after the transition period from Ceneco to Negros Power.
Cabrera said that the permanent solution is to implement the Negros Power five-year rehabilitation and modernization of all its facilities to avoid occurrence of similar power crisis. | GB