Electric coops restore power in quake-hit areas —NEA

The power distribution services in the coverage areas of all electric cooperatives hit by the Central Luzon and Eastern Visayas earthquakes early this week have returned to normal, the National Electrification Administration (NEA) said Wednesday.

Citing its monitoring report as of 12 noon, NEA said all electric cooperatives in Central Luzon have reported normal operations including those in Pampanga - which suffered a series of power interruptions shortly after a magnitude 6.1-magnitude temblor jolted Zambales on Monday.

NEA deputy administrator for Technical Services Artis Nikki Tortola said it took a while for the Pampanga II Electric Cooperative Inc. (PELCO-II) to fully restore power for all its customers but its distribution system was expected to normalize by Wednesday.

The Guagua-based PELCO-II earlier reported it was able to switch the lights back on for 201,227 or 99.85 percent of its consumers by Tuesday afternoon.

"All (ECs in Central Luzon) are under normal operations already even PELCO II, which was significantly hit. But so far, they have restored their system as of today,” Tortola said.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Samar Electric Cooperative Inc. (ESAMELCO) reported it has fully restored electricity service to nine municipalities, namely Arteche, Can-avid, Dolores, Jipadpad, Maslog, Oras, San Policarpio, Taft, and Sulat out of 23 areas affected by the 6.5-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday.

Power restoration efforts continued and were completed by Wednesday for the municipalities of Balangiga, Balangkayan, Borongan City, General MacArthur, Giporlos, Guiuan, Hernani, Lawaan, Llorente, Maydolong, Mercedes, Quinapondan, Salcedo, and San Julian, where the quake’s epicenter was located, according to NEA.

The coverage areas of Samar I Electric Cooperative Inc. (SAMELCO I), SAMELCO II, Northern Samar Electric Cooperative, Inc. (NORSAMELCO) also experienced varying degrees of outages because of the earthquake but power has nonetheless been quickly restored.

Tortola said the tremor only caused minor damage to power co-ops in Eastern Visayas.

"All issues are more or less NGCP. Only minor damage to the co-ops," the NEA deputy administrator said.

The National Grid Corporation Philippines (NGCP) reported Tuesday that power transmission operations in Visayas were all under normal operations after it completed the restoration of lines affected by the tremor.

For this reason, the NEA sees no need to activate the Electric Cooperatives Emergency and Resiliency Fund (ECERF) just yet as power transmission and distribution operations in the affected areas are expected to remain stable.

“While power interruptions did occur right away because of the earthquakes, it was common under the protocols of NGCP. Once its operations began to normalize, power has been restored immediately to the affected areas,” NEA Administrator Edgardo Masongsong said.

Moreover, the ECERF law cannot be implemented in and of itself because the P750-million fund it promised to rehabilitate the facilities of disaster-stricken electric cooperatives is yet to be provided under the 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA), according to the NEA chief.

“We still have to find out if funding for the ECERF is included in the 2019 GAA,” Masongsong said, adding that people should be more concerned about power supply inadequacies that resulted in manual/automatic load dropping schemes or rotational brownouts by the grid operator. —LDF, GMA News