Billena: ILECO brownouts to last until March 2011
Consumers of Iloilo Electric Cooperative (ILECO) 1, 2, and 3 have yet to experience relief from the almost daily power interruptions.
Panay-Guimaras Power Supply Consortium president Wilfredo Billena said the daily power outages are mostly due to lack of power supply.
“Power plants connected to our grid have low capacity,” he said in an interview over ABS-CBN Iloilo.
The scheduled brownouts can also be caused by maintenance works.
Billena said “the brownouts will continue until March 2011 when we expect the start of the commercial operation of the coal fired-power plant.”
If it won’t commercially operate, Billena admitted they will have no source of steady electricity supply.
“Where could we possibly get the supply? How could we address the increasing demand of electricity when’s no other other plant in Western Visayas?” he said.
ILECO 1 is fully contracted with other suppliers after it severed its contract with National Power Corp., while ILECO 2 is still with NPC but its contract will also expire end of December 2010.
After the privatization of NPC’s Panay Diesel Power Plant in Dingle, Iloilo, Billena said the power barges in Iloilo could not sustain the 24-hour electricity needs of Iloilo provincial consumers.
For now, the only “light at the end of the tunnel” for electric cooperatives in Iloilo province is the commercial operation of the 164-megawatt coal-fired power of the Panay Energy Development Corp. in Iloilo City.
“I’m not advertising the coal plant. But our consumers should understand the situation of electric cooperatives because we are just distributor of power. We are not producing power for distribution to the consumers,” Billena said.
Once the coal-fired power plant commercially operates, among the off-takers are the seven electric cooperatives under the Panay-Guimaras Power Supply Consortium which signed a Memorandum Agreement with PEDC on Oct. 19, 2009.
The seven cooperatives are the ILECO 1, 2 and 3, Guimaras Electric Cooperative, Capiz Electric Cooperative, Antique Electric Cooperative, and Aklan Electric Cooperative.
Meanwhile, Billena appealed to consumers to save energy.*
