HIGH TECH REVOLUTION: MORE Power upgrades ‘overstressed’ relics to unmanned, SCADA-ready hubs

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By Francis Allan L. Angelo

When MORE Electric and Power Corporation took over power distribution in Iloilo City in 2020, its engineers walked into five deteriorating substations running on rusted equipment, overloaded transformers, and infrastructure that in some cases had not been substantially upgraded in 30 years.

Five years on, four of those substations have been stripped down and rebuilt from the ground up — equipped with state-of-the-art switchgear, intelligent protection relays, and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) technology — and can now be operated entirely without on-site personnel.

“Before, ang original nga nakuha naton nga substations from the previous deal is five substations. Out of that five substations, may apat na kita na rehab.”

(“Before, the original substations we inherited from the previous arrangement were five. Out of those five substations, we have already rehabilitated four.”)

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.”

The achievement marks a milestone not only for MORE Power but for the entire Panay power grid.

According to Molano, the rehabilitated facilities are now the first substations in Panay equipped to operate on a fully unmanned basis — a configuration where no operator is stationed on-site, and all switching commands, load monitoring, and fault detection are performed remotely from the company’s central control center.

FROM EMERGENCY TO AUTOMATION

The urgency of the rehabilitation program was apparent from MORE Power’s earliest days.

Within months of assuming the franchise, the company’s technical team identified the Mandurriao substation as critically overstressed and at immediate risk of cascading failure.

MORE Power president Roel Castro publicly declared the repair “classified as urgent” in 2020, warning that if problems were left unattended, the vulnerability of the substation would only worsen and cause irreparable damage to the facility.

The company’s initial answer was a mobile stopgap: on November 20, 2020, MORE Power ceremonially switched on a 10-megavolt-ampere (MVA) mobile substation at Mandurriao, bringing the strained facility down to a safer operating level of around 70 percent capacity and buying time for the full rehabilitation to proceed.

That crisis, documented in this paper’s coverage at the time, set the template for what would become a systematic, city-wide approach.

Rather than patching one failing facility at a time, MORE Power’s leadership committed to a five-year development plan that would sequentially rehabilitate all five inherited substations and, in doing so, lay the digital infrastructure for a fully automated distribution network.

THE CITY PROPER UPGRADE

Among the most visible early milestones was the City Proper substation, where MORE Power replaced the facility’s aging 20 MVA transformer — a unit that had been in operation for roughly 30 years when the company inherited it — with a new 33 MVA unit.

The upgrade substantially increased the district’s power capacity and, critically, the new transformer was specified to be SCADA-ready, integrating seamlessly into the company’s emerging remote monitoring architecture.

The company also undertook a massive pole and transformer replacement campaign in the years immediately after taking over, replacing some 600 deteriorating wooden poles and installing more than 600 transformer units between 2020 and 2022.

WHAT ‘UNMANNED’ ACTUALLY MEANS

For consumers puzzled by the concept of a substation with no on-site operator, Molano offered a detailed explanation during the “MORE Power at Your Service” segment, filmed inside one of the newly rehabilitated facilities.

“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 of the substations — replacing legacy equipment with higher-specification, SCADA-compatible devices — was precisely what made unmanned operation possible.

Today, all switching commands, load readings, voltage data, and fault indicators flow in real time from the substation to the control center, where operators monitor the entire network on a single display.

“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.”)

The substation visited during the segment was carrying a load of 10 megawatts at the time of filming — with no operator present on the floor.

Molano was careful to clarify that “unmanned” does not mean unattended.

Security personnel remain posted at each facility, and field technicians are dispatched for routine maintenance — battery bank checks, relay testing, and periodic inspections — as well as any physical faults that arise.

What the system eliminates is the need for a permanent on-site operator to manually read gauges, flip switches, and log data.

“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.”)

A PLATFORM FOR THE FUTURE

The integration of SCADA technology also addresses a concern that loomed over MORE Power’s early years: the fragility of a distribution network where a single substation failure could cascade into city-wide blackouts. With real-time telemetry now flowing from each facility, the control center can isolate a fault or reroute load within seconds of detection — a response time that was simply impossible under the old manual regime.

The company allocated an estimated P1 billion in 2022 alone for substation development work, including the construction of the control center building, the purchase and deployment of a 30/36 MVA mobile substation — the first of its kind in the Philippines, assembled by Turkish manufacturer Aktif Elektroteknik using components from Germany and Italy — and upgrades to sub-transmission lines across the city.

The mobile substation, with its ability to be relocated between districts, proved an invaluable tool during the rehabilitation sequence, serving as a temporary power source for areas whose permanent substation was being taken offline for construction.

ONE MORE TO GO

With four substations rehabilitated and operational, attention turns to the fifth and final facility.

MORE Power has indicated the Molo substation rehabilitation — the last in the original five franchise facilities — is in its final stages, following a 2024 upgrade that installed new transformers and SCADA-integrated equipment at that district hub as well.

Molano framed the entire program in structural terms: substations are the foundation of the distribution pyramid, and no amount of investment in feeder lines or consumer connections would deliver reliable power if the base was unsound.

“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 108,381 electric consumers, the practical translation is straightforward: fewer and shorter outages, faster restoration when faults do occur, and a distribution backbone now capable of supporting the city’s continued growth as one of the fastest-developing urban centers in the Visayas.