Manila Bulletin
by Myrna Velasco
July 16, 2014 (updated)
Typhoon “Glenda” plunged Luzon and Visayas grids into widespread blackouts as it left massive damage to transmission facilities and triggered flooding in some areas, which in turn caused hurdles in electricity supply restoration.
As of noon Wednesday, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) indicated that it deployed its choppers “to assess damage” in Southern Luzon and Metro Manila areas which had been hardly hit by the typhoon’s strike dawn of Wednesday.
“We are trying to complete the loop around Metro Manila so we can power up Metro Manila by late afternoon,” NGCP senior adviser to the president Joseph Ferdinand Dechavez said.
Millions of Filipinos who had been reeling hard from the wallop of the calamity woke up even more exasperated on hump day with the pestering blackouts and downed communication lines.
NGCP reported that around 16 transmission lines were affected, based on its monitoring as of Wednesday morning. That excluded yet the damage being assessed in the lines wheeling electricity to Metro Manila.
“Bicol region was isolated from the grid due to the outage of several 230-kilovolt lines,” the company said.
As of press time, power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) announced that 86 percent of its 5.3 million customers were “left without power,” as it confirmed that the transmission lines of NGCP “remained out” as of mid-day yesterday.
“Due to said outages of vital NGCP transmission lines, generation plants in the south are unable to deliver power to Meralco,” the utility firm explained.
Given the extent of supply disruption from the south, Meralco noted “efforts to convey power from the northern grid has been undertaken.”
At its own load network, Meralco emphasized that it has been assessing “the extent of damage in its distribution facilities, including poles, transformers, wires and sub-transmission lines.”
The utility firm also deployed its own team to repair damage at its facilities, yet it asserted that it “could not give an estimated time as to when power will be restored,” especially in the hardest hit areas of Calamba-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal and Quezon.
Meralco added “restoration time depends on several factors including how soon the affected transmission facilities will be operational.”
It emphasized that there will be volumes of debris to be cleared in affected areas, in addition to the scale of damage that it must work on at its facilities.” source
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