‘Hellish’ lightning storm plunges Panay, Guimaras in darkness

An intense lightning storm Thursday night resulted in massive blackouts in parts of Panay and Guimaras Islands.

Lightning caused power lines of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo to trip off, leading to the power outage.

It plunged the entire Iloilo City, Guimaras, and parts of Iloilo province, and Antique into darkness for almost three hours.

According to NGCP, Sta. Barbara-Iloilo 138kV lines 1 and 2 tripped off at around 9:42 p.m. amid the lightning storm.

Engr. Lazaro Dela Cruz Jr., senior manager for Panay District of NGCP, said their facility protection was activated following the trip-off, but abnormal lightning and intermittent lightning flashes along the lines resulted in simultaneous trip-offs of the Sta. Barbara Substation.

Normally, Dela Cruz explained that power lines have installed overhead wiring to serve as protection against lightning strikes.

But lightning experienced on Thursday evening were abnormal and protection lines couldn’t hold the lightning energy.

“After the incident happened, we dispatched line crew to conduct inspection. Wala naman sang may natumba nga tower, natumbahan sang kahoy. But sad to say grabe ang lightning flashes, abnormal to siya so ang overhead wiring nga gaprotect sa aton linya, it cannot hold and dissipate the energy of the lightning that is why ang iban nga lighting galusot sa linya,” Dela Cruz said.

The simultaneous trip off resulted in total power outages in the franchise areas of Iloilo I Electric Cooperative, Inc. (ILECO I), Antique Electric Cooperative (ANTECO), MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power); and the province of Guimaras.

The Sta. Barbara Substation is also directly connected to the Iloilo Substation of Global Business Power (GBP) which operates coal-fired power plants through its subsidiary Panay Energy Development Corp (PEDC).

PEDC supplies electricity to Iloilo City’s new power distributor, MORE Power.

As the Sta. Barbara power lines tripped off, Units 1 and 2 of PEDC also suffered power fluctuations. The fluctuations later caused all three PEDC units to trip-off at around 10:13 p.m.

Power supply was restored in Iloilo, Guimaras, and Antique at around 12:10 a.m the following day.

In Iloilo City, power was restored past 11 and midnight except for the Molo Substation which was fully restored past 2 a.m.

Dela Cruz said the trip-offs of power lines due to lighting are normal especially during rainy season.

Last July 4, he said that the Sta. Barbara Line 2 also tripped off, but there was no power interruption as Line 1 was still energized. (ERS)