8-hour brownout takes toll on small businesses

By Malu Cadeliña Manar
Wednesday, April 18, 2012


KIDAPAWAN CITY -- A number of small establishments, most of which dependent on power, closed their business after the local electric cooperative announced Wednesday that the rotating brownouts would last from six to eight hours.


Vicente Baguio, spokesman for the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco), said the power was shut off around 8:22 a.m., and was restored only around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday.


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The rotating brownout would again resume for another three to four hours between 3 p.m. until 10 p.m., he said.


"What income would we get with these long hours of brownouts? How long are we going to suffer?" asked Armalyn Bravo, one of the beauticians at a local salon here.


Armalyn's salon located on Quezon blvd. here was supposed to open at 8 a.m. Wednesday, but because there was no power, she had to close her salon.


Dan Sambrano of the Metro Kidapawan Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation Inc., (MKCCFI) said that since March, at least 50 percent of the small businesses in the province closed shops due to unstable power supply.


Many of these establishments, he said, were internet shops and beauty salons.


The rotating blackouts in North Cotabato started last October last year.


It only got worse starting February this year, according to Baguio, when the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the transmission facility, deducted at least 30 percent from the regular load dispatch for Cotelco.


Starting Wednesday, Baguio said Cotelco was only given 42.7 percent of the total power requirement for North Cotabato or 15.4 megawatts (MW) of the 36 (MW) of load dispatch.


“This is the reason why starting Wednesday our service areas would be experiencing six to eight hours of rotating brownouts daily,” he said.


The cooperative, however, is working out that it be given a provisional authority by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) so it could buy power, at least eight (MW), from a power barge in Davao City.


"If, indeed, the ERC grants this provisional authority, at least 8 MW would be added to our 15.4 MW power requirement," said Baguio.


Meantime, the Provincial Board in North Cotabato is also bent on filing a case against the National Power Corporation (Napocor) and the Power Sectors Assets, Liabilities, and Management (Psalm) for their refusal to grant the Cotelco 26 megawatts from the two geothermal power plants located at Mount Apo.


The Provincial Council also believes that as host of these plants the province is entitled to a 25 percent load dispatch daily from the Mount Apo geothermal power plants.


"Despite the existing laws, we are at the mercy of the power transmission and generation facilities as to whether or not they would give us the needed power for the province. We’re doing now a very careful study of the cases that would be filed against these agencies. We don't want to go wrong this time,” said Cotabato second district board member Jose Ping Tejada, chair of the committee on power.


Earlier, the City Council in Kidapawan warned it would go to court if Napocor and Psalm still refuse to dispatch 26 megawatts from the 104 MW geothermal plants at the Mount Apo.

Published in the Sun.Star Davao newspaper on April 19, 2012.