By: Nestor P. Burgos Jr. 03:10 AM September 8th,
2016
ILOILO CITY—Brownouts lasting from
30 minutes to an hour continued to hit this city in recent weeks, affecting
thousands of consumers and commercial establishments.
But the energy supplier and
distributor in the city are pointing fingers on the cause.
Engineer Randy Pastolero, vice
president for operations of the Panay Electric Company (Peco), said three power
outages in the past two months were triggered by the automatic activation of
the special protecting scheme of the relay system of Panay Energy Development
Corporation (PEDC).
The system automatically shuts off
supply to Peco when it detects malfunctions and trips to protect PEDC’s system.
PEDC operates a 164-megawatt
coal-fired power plant which supplies the bulk of the demand of Peco. Peak
demand reaches 107 megawatts.
Peco is the sole power distributor
in the city with about 58,000 consumers.
Pastolero said the activation of the
protection system affects four of its substations that service Arevalo and
Mandurriao districts and parts of downtown, Jaro and Lapaz districts.
He said the settings of the relay
system should be fine-tuned to prevent frequent activation of the protection
scheme.
“(The settings) might not be
suitable for the current load because demand has significantly increased,”
Pastolero said.
But engineer Nilo Madrid, PEDC plant
manager, said the settings are always coordinated with Peco.
He said most of the power
interruptions in the city are caused by problems within the Peco system.
Short duration brownouts are not
triggered by the activation of the protection scheme in their relay system,
according to Madrid.
He said they have tapped a
consultant to study and help improve the system.
One option is to replace the relay
system to ensure minimal glitches in power transmission.
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