City’s energy agenda top SP, MORE Power dialogue today

MORE Power will engage members of the City Council in a discussion today, June 30, 2020, “in aid of legislation” anchoring on the energy agenda that will benefit Ilonggo consumers.

This developed as Councilor Rommel Duron, chair of the Sangguniang Panlungsod’s Committee on Public Utilities, called on MORE Power, the city’s sole power distributor after PECO, to address various issues and concerns, with emphasis on the recent power trip-offs and unscheduled interruptions.

“We welcome this development and we have been looking forward for us to shed light to the issues surrounding the recent power outages and we believe that the SP Committee is the proper forum,” MORE Power president Roel Castro said in a statement to Daily Guardian.

“From day one, we have been striving to realize the goal of the city government of Iloilo to bring light to each roof under our area of jurisdiction. The past 110 days since we took over the power distribution from PECO turned out to be both challenging and productive as it galvanized our resolve to bring not only immediate but lasting solutions to the energy problem in the city of Iloilo. And it actually propels us to strive more to be dauntless in implementing innovative approaches to secure our energy’s future,” Castro said.

“This avenue that is given to us by the City Council therefore is a welcome development for us and we will take this opportunity to keep the honorable Committee informed of the real status of the distribution facilities as well as efforts being undertaken by MORE Power to rehabilitate the old and dilapidated system that PECO used to serve the Ilonggos. We are sure that this investigation in aid of legislation will be the launching pad in crafting relevant Ordinances for a better energy agenda that will benefit our consumers,” Castro further stated.

Very recently, MORE Power was plagued by a series of trip-offs which it qualified as a “series of mysterious trip-offs and outages”.

The most notorious of which was the rotational blackouts that occurred at the Mandurriao sub-station weeks ago, leading to power outages and extended unscheduled interruptions affecting areas under the Feeder 4 network, which, some observers described as a “sabotage” against the new power distributor.

Rep. Julienne Baronda of the Lone District of Iloilo City has called on the Ilonggo power consumers to join in an “all-out war” to put an end to “syndicated or organized business” that is apparently running the power pilferage operations out to tarnish the operations of MORE Power.

Earlier, Mayor Jerry Treñas lauded the City Council for authorizing him to enter into a memorandum of agreement with MORE Power in initiating the crackdown on power thieves in the city of Iloilo especially those employing “jumpers” which, according to reports, totaled to 30,000.

Relatedly, the mayor hailed its partnership with MORE Power in the launching of its iKONEK Program, a one-stop-shop in processing the application for regular power connection accounts within a span of 10-12 days at most, to flush out illegal power connections and at the same time encourage Ilonggos to secure their own regular accounts with MORE Power.

 

TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

“Faithful to our oath, we will embrace the values of transparency and accountability as a consistent measure of unqualified services because we believe that the people of the city of Iloilo deserve no less,” Castro said in relation to the SP committee’s stance to get to the bottom of the situation plaguing MORE Power services.

“With this in mind, it would also be an honor on our part to share our accomplishments covering the 110 days of our operations,” he said, emphasizing “we are doing our best to provide the city’s energy service.”

In its accomplishment report, Castro said MORE Power was able to replace a total of 109 “rotten poles” covering the period of 110 days since MORE Power took over on February 29, this year.

“And who could imagine that in just 110 days, we have also replaced and updated 146 transformers. If you will count the number of days that we have been operating, we have been replacing more than one (1) transformer per day on the average,” he noted.

In its report, MORE Power stated that Transformer replacements is comprised of 33 units of 100 kilovolt-ampere (kVA), 52 units of 75kVA, 38 units of 50 kVA, 18 units of 37.5 kVa, and 5 units of 25 kVA.

The same report showed that MORE Power attended to a total of 4,519 “Trouble Calls and Work Order Responses” while its “Customer Care Responses” accumulated a total of 50,068 through the company’s customer welfare desk, helpline, and social media platforms.

MORE Power also reported that it corrected a total of 133 hotspots of overheating sections comprising of air-break switch, disconnect cutout, disconnect switch, primary bushing, primary connector, secondary connector, primary jumper, sectionalizing cutout, line cutout, fuse cutout, pole grounding connector, and hotline clamps.

On top of that, Castro said MORE Power was able to attend to 2,020 power restoration concerns, 1,075 power quality concerns, 449 meter concerns, 214 pole concerns, and 761 other concerns.

“We really need to fix things and that is what we are actually doing 24/7. Rest assured that we are initiating proactive programs and policies attuned to the needs of our time to better serve the people of Iloilo. And this is propelled by our avowed mission to steer our city closer towards sustained prosperity and security through a sustainable energy service,” Castro further said.