‘Freak accident’ causes blackout

Installation of a modern transmission loop and control system will protect Iloilo City’s power distribution services and hasten the response time to brownouts just like what happened Wednesday morning.

MORE Electric and Power Corp. Roel Castro said they will fast track their modernization project to prevent unscheduled brownouts caused by faults in the old and dilapidated distribution system of the city.

Castro made the assurance after a freak accident involving a container van truck caused a power blackout in Iloilo City past 11 am Wednesday.

According to MORE Power, the container van truck tangled with the line of a telecommunication firm at Rizal Street, Lapuz district.

As the truck driver tried to stay clear of the wire, the electric pole (to which the telco line was also attached) moved and caused Circuit Breaker No. 31 of Panay Power Corp (PPC) to open after detecting a fault.

PPC is one of the power suppliers of MORE Power.

MORE Power said the incident affected Sub-Transmission Lines 2 and 4 which supply electricity to the City Proper, Molo, Jaro, and Mandurriao substations. It also affected two feeders of the Lapaz Substation.

The said facilities have a combined capacity of 69.454 megawatts.

MORE Power said power supply was gradually restored to the affected within one hour after clearing the affected 69-kilovolt (kV) and 13.2-kV lines.

Castro said the outage could have been prevented if a distribution loop system was installed by the previous power distributor of the city.

To recall, MORE Power said that part of its 3-year modernization project is to install a looping system in the 69-kilovolt sub-transmission facility to provide backup power supply whenever there are faults or problems in the distribution system.

In electrical engineering, a loop system rings through the service area and returns to the original point. The loop is usually tied to an alternate power source.

By placing switches in strategic locations, the utility can supply power to the customer from either direction, thus improving the stability of the system and minimizes outages.

Castro said described the distribution system they took over from the previous distribution utility (DU) “as nothing more than a straight line that is vulnerable to massive and cascading brownouts.”

“Under this old straight-line system, the city is vulnerable to brownouts once it loses its connection to the transmission lines and power suppliers. Ten years ago, the business community in the city and its consultants suggested to the previous DU to modernize its system but it fell on deaf ears,” he added.

Castro said they will move for the installation of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which will hasten the detection and response to faults or problems in the distribution lines.

SCADA is an industrial control system used in many modern industries like energy to organize multiple technologies that process, gather, and monitor data at the same time to send instructions to those points that transmit data.

Castro said the current mechanical controls of the previous DU are a far cry from the more modern technologies used by other utilities in the country and abroad.

“With SCADA, we can automatically identify the fault and isolate an area where the outage will occur with the click of the computer mouse. That will spare the rest of the distribution system from massive and cascading brownouts. SCADA will only be useful if we improve the old distribution system to the loop system because we will have automated switches, not the outdated mechanical ones used by the previous management. For now, the fault detection mechanism in the distribution line of the previous DU is all mano-mano (manual),” he added.