‘GRID FIRST’: MORE Power turns Iloilo City into WV’s first fully SCADA-ready distribution network

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Iloilo City has quietly achieved something no other distribution utility in Western Visayas or the Negros Island Region has managed: a power distribution network where substations can be operated entirely from a single control room, with no personnel stationed on the floor.

MORE Electric and Power Corporation has rehabilitated four of its five inherited substations and equipped each with supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) technology, making them the first unmanned, automation-ready substation facilities in both regions — a milestone with direct, measurable consequences for Iloilo City’s 108,381 electricity consumers.

The stakes are straightforward: fewer outages, and when outages do occur, faster restoration — measured now in mouse clicks rather than minutes of manual response.

“Since remote na ang operations nya, kun real-time nila makita ang decision-making, ang restoration is rapid na. Just a matter of click lang sa mouse, computer mouse, maka-restore ka na.”

(“Since operations are now remote, and they can see everything in real time, decision-making and power restoration become rapid. It is just a matter of a click of the computer mouse, and you can already restore supply.”)

That was Engineer Mark Anthony Molano, MORE Power’s substation project manager, speaking in a recent episode of the company’s information program “MORE Power at Your Service.”

WHAT CONSUMERS INHERIT FROM A BROKEN GRID

When MORE Power assumed the Iloilo City franchise in 2020, it inherited infrastructure that, by any technical measure, was already living on borrowed time.

Five substations. Rusted switchgear. Overloaded transformers. Equipment in some facilities that had not been substantially upgraded in three decades.

The immediate danger was not theoretical. Within months of taking over, MORE Power’s engineers flagged the Mandurriao substation as critically overstressed — one vulnerable enough that MORE Power president Roel Castro publicly declared its repair “classified as urgent,” warning that failure to act would cause irreparable damage.

For consumers, the legacy of that aging infrastructure was chronic: voltage fluctuations, load-shedding risk, and the constant threat that a single fault at one substation could cascade across the entire city grid.

The company’s answer was not a patch — it was a rebuild, one substation at a time.

5-year reconstruction

On November 20, 2020, MORE Power switched on a 10-megavolt-ampere (MVA) mobile substation at Mandurriao as an emergency measure, bringing the overstressed facility down to a safer operating level of around 70 percent capacity and buying time for full reconstruction.

That stopgap became the template for what followed: a sequenced, city-wide rehabilitation program in which each inherited substation was taken offline, stripped of its legacy equipment, and rebuilt with modern, SCADA-compatible hardware.

At the City Proper substation, MORE Power replaced a 30-year-old 20 MVA transformer with a new 33 MVA unit — immediately expanding the district’s power capacity while integrating the new transformer into the company’s emerging remote monitoring architecture.

The company also replaced some 600 deteriorating wooden poles and installed more than 600 transformer units between 2020 and 2022 — a street-level overhaul that accompanied the substation rebuilds.

The investment was substantial. MORE Power allocated an estimated P1 billion in 2022 alone for substation development, including the construction of its central control center, sub-transmission line upgrades, and the procurement of a 30/36 MVA mobile substation — the first of its kind in the Philippines, assembled by Turkish manufacturer Aktif Elektroteknik using components sourced from Germany and Italy.

That mobile unit proved critical to the reconstruction sequence, serving as a temporary power source for districts whose permanent substation was taken offline for rebuilding.

Four years and four rebuilt substations later, the result is a distribution backbone that is categorically different from the one the franchise inherited.

What ‘unmanned’ means

For most electricity consumers, the inner workings of a substation are invisible by design. But the shift from manual to remote operation has direct consequences for service reliability.

Under the old configuration, a fault at a substation required a physical operator to detect the anomaly on-site, diagnose the problem, and execute switching commands manually — a process measured in tens of minutes at minimum, and longer if the fault occurred at night or during severe weather.

Under the SCADA-integrated model, all switching commands, load readings, voltage data, and fault indicators flow in real time from each substation to the company’s central control center, where operators monitor the entire network on a single display. Fault isolation and load rerouting can be executed remotely within seconds of detection.

Molano, filmed inside one of the newly rebuilt facilities — which was carrying a load of 10 megawatts at the time, with no operator on the floor — explained the technical prerequisite that makes this possible.

“If ma-unman ka sa substation, of course, ang prerequisite is dapat all your devices are ready para sa SCADA. If ang devices mo is indi ready, so ang communication mo towards these devices, wala.”

(“If you want to unman a substation, the prerequisite is that all your devices must be SCADA-ready. If your devices are not ready, then your communication link to those devices simply does not exist.”)

The rehabilitation program — replacing legacy equipment with higher-specification, SCADA-compatible devices — was precisely what made unmanned operation achievable. Without it, the control center would have had nothing to talk to.

Molano was also careful to clarify what “unmanned” does not mean. Security personnel remain posted at each facility. Field technicians are dispatched for routine maintenance — battery bank checks, relay testing, periodic inspections — and for any physical fault that requires on-site intervention.

What the system eliminates is the permanent on-site operator whose job was to manually read gauges, flip switches, and log data: tasks now handled automatically, continuously, and at a speed no human operator could match.

“In case nga may trouble within the substation, may mga technicians na naman nga available para magkadto diri sa substation. Pero ang monitoring, decision making — dira sa control center.”

(“In case there is any trouble within the substation, technicians are available to go there. But the monitoring and decision-making — those remain at the control center.”)

One MORE, then a complete network

With four substations rebuilt and operational, MORE Power is in the final stages of rehabilitating the Molo substation — the fifth and last facility inherited from the previous franchise arrangement. A 2024 upgrade already installed new transformers and SCADA-integrated equipment at the district hub.

When Molo is completed, Iloilo City will have the only fully modernized, end-to-end SCADA-ready distribution substation network in Western Visayas and the Negros Island Region.

Molano framed the significance in terms that go beyond technical specifications.

“Dapat kun gusto mo sing mas maayo nga serbisyo sa pumuluyo, dapat ang mga base mo or ang mga foundations mo are ready. And then, it doesn’t only mean na ready siya, pero maka-adapt siya sa mga technologies nga available on this time.”

(“If you want better service for the people, your bases and foundations must be ready. And it does not only mean that they are ready — they must also be able to adapt to the technologies available today.”)

For Iloilo City’s consumers, the practical translation is already in effect: a distribution network whose foundation can now detect a fault, isolate it, and begin restoration before most customers have reached for their phones to report the outage.