MORE Power blames Peco for brownouts
By Lenie Lectura – June 5, 2020
from Business Mirror
MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) on Thursday blamed Panay Electric Co. (Peco) for the hours-long power outages that occurred last month.
The company said it had no choice but to implement maintenance works on substations, transformers and distribution system since it took over from Peco on February 28.
MORE Power President Roel Castro said the maintenance works were necessary because the distribution system was left “rotting, in state of disrepair” and “like a ticking time bomb.”
Unfortunately, the company said the required maintenance works caused the longest brownout in Jaro district. “The required maintenance works that caused the longest brownout was in Jaro district on May 17 after MORE Power conducted preventive maintenance work on Jaro substation.”
Castro said the five Iloilo City power substations are an integral part of the power distribution system as they reduce voltage to a level suitable for local distribution. Apart from stabilizing the system, substations also protect the consumers from sudden drops or surges of electricity.
Based on recent inspections on these facilities, Castro said the inspection team found “high levels of dissolved gas due to degradation of oil and paper insulation.”
“If we liken it to a person who underwent blood analysis, the oil in the substations have high cholesterol, uric acid, and triglycerides. The substations are very sick because there are gases that are over 100 times over the limit. I am sorry to be frank but the system is rotting when we took over,” he said.
Castro cited the Mandurriao substation which showed high levels of methane, ethane, ethylene, and acetylene.
He also said four of the five substations are over 90 percent loaded against the normal load of 70 to 80 percent. Over the past three months, he said 10 overloaded transformers exploded.
MORE Power has so far replaced and upgraded 96 transformers and erected 98 new concrete poles. It also replaced almost 11,000 new electric meters since they took over from Peco.
To avoid bigger damage and longer interruptions, MORE Power started a so-called Comprehensive Preventive Maintenance of the substations. The preventive maintenance work lasted for 13 hours.
“On the part of the substations, we have to undertake the maintenance works and implement brownouts because if we don’t do this now, the facilities will explode, and we will suffer from longer brownouts,” he added.
A week before the scheduled maintenance works, MORE Power said it conducted a “massive” information dissemination campaign.
Castro said Peco failed to implement new capital expenditures for the last 10 years to improve and upgrade the facilities.
The MORE Power executive issued the statement after Peco said the other day that the recent power outages were expected to happen “when you force major upgrades within a short span of time, rather than spreading it out over a period of time, checking your records what were previously replaced, which lines are previously upgraded, and only upgrading what needs to be upgraded as of the moment.”
Engr. Fil Sonza of MORE Power’s Technical Services Division said Peco did not conduct a comprehensive preventive maintenance “that’s why there was not much scheduled power interruptions during their time but more on unscheduled power interruptions.”
