MORE blames PECO for ‘decrepit’ power system

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Iloilo City’s new power utility asked the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to deny the appeal of Panay Electric Co. (PECO) to get back its license to operate for showing “total disregard of consumer interests in running to ground the city’s distribution system.”

In its opposition to PECO’s supplemental motion with the ERC, More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) said the former distribution utility focused on “making money for its lawyers, PR consultants and its stockholders.”

MORE Power also told the ERC that the old utility “showed grave abuse of the courts in mounting different legal cases to bar the full takeover by the new congressional franchisee as the city’s new power utility through the expropriation of the distribution system.”

PECO filed the motion with ERC in a bid to regain its provisional certificate of public convenience and necessity citing lack of due process and MORE Power’s purported lack of technical competence to operate a power distribution system, among other reasons.

MORE Power told the ERC that “PECO even continues to send monthly bills to Ilonggos despite losing its provisional Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) from the ERC.”

“To protect the consumers of Iloilo City, the Iloilo City Government has revoked PECO’s business permit, making PECO’s activities related to the operation of the distribution system highly illegal. PECO likewise does not have a franchise and is no longer a legitimate CPCN holder yet continues to fool consumers by inviting new applications for electricity connection and reporting power outages despite losing control of the operations to the new utility,” it added.

PECO, according MORE Power, “is maximizing its ability to collect more during the one year period to pay for its expenses like their lawyers’ fees, newspaper advertisements, PR expenses, and the balance for cash dividends to its stockholders.”

Congress had ignored PECO’s application for the renewal of its franchise and decided to grant the franchise to MORE Power.

President Rodrigo R. Duterte signed Republic Act No. 11212 into law on February 14, 2019, weeks after PECO’s franchise expired in January 2019.

MORE Power said that during the one-year period  that PECO continued to operate as the city’s distribution utility under the provisional CPCN, “it run the distribution system to the ground with a “no-more-investment-lets-just-get-the-most-out-of-this-facility” attitude as it no longer undertook vital preventive maintenance.”

“The deterioration of the distribution system of PECO accelerated during the one-year period when PECO, using all sorts of dilatory actions in the various courts, delayed the issuance and implementation of the writ of possession for the takeover of the distribution by MORE,” MORE Power said in its response to PECO’s motion.

“During that one-year period PECO ran the distribution to the ground with little or no rehabilitation or maintenance. Many parts of the aging system were overheating and bursting into flames on a regular basis,” it added.

MORE Power said PECO’s failure to do preventive maintenance left the distribution system “rotting, decrepit, and a ticking time bomb.”

“The state of disrepair of Iloilo City’s distribution system that MORE Power tries to solve with preventive maintenance operations is the real cause of the numerous power outages, contrary to PECO’s claim the brownouts are proofs that MORE Power did not have the experience and the expertise to run an electricity distribution system.”

The new utility said that for instance, PECO allegedly “misrepresented MORE Power’s direct hiring of PECO technicians assigned to the five substations who manage electricity distribution and voltage in the city’s five districts as proof of its claim that the new utility could not even hire trained people to handle the utility’s technical operations.”

MORE Power said that of the 122 personnel running the five substations now, “61 came from service providers contracted by PECO to cut costs and maximize its stockholders’ dividends.”

The Enrique Razon-led firm said it directly hired the 61 technicians before it took over the substations and other systems in the city’s distribution network in compliance with Congress’ directive in RA 11212 that “no PECO personnel in the rank and file would be displaced during the transition period.”

“The technical readiness of MORE is evident in that it was able to take over operations of PECO as soon as it took possession of the facilities on 28 and 29 February 2020 with no disruption to the power supply to Iloilo City,” MORE Power said.

The company pointed out that it was the report of the ERC’s technical inspection team, which PECO insists it has not seen nor examined, that convinced the Commission that “MORE Power has become fully capable of and has taken full possession of the distribution system in Iloilo City.”

“This assessment of MORE Power’s management of the distribution system is the reason cited by the ERC in cancelling the provisional CPCN of PECO and granting MORE Power the provisional authority to run the Iloilo City distribution system.”

The company stressed that it “hit the ground running when it started its operations of the city’s distribution system, and replaced immediately eight defective distribution transformers which were part of the many transformers operating at dangerously high temperatures that PECO did not bother to replace in their ‘no-more-investment-lets-just-get-the-most-out-of-this-facility’ attitude.”

The system was so old and decrepit that it breaks down or catches fire every day, causing brownouts in five to eight isolated blocks every night, MORE Power added.

To assure Ilonggos that it fulfills its promise of better service, MORE Power said it set a record of rapid responses to customer complaints, with the shortest time recorded at five minutes and the longest in restoring power at eight hours and 44 minutes.

“In contrast, PECO’s hotline number stopped responding to consumer calls at 5 pm every day, so when a brownout occurred after that time PECO’s response team would not respond till the next morning, or even two days after at best,” MORE Power said.

“For more than one year, PECO has continued holding on to the distribution system despite having no franchise. It misused judicial processes to derail the expropriation proceedings mandated under RA 11212,” MORE Power said.

To grant PECO’s appeal to restore its CPCN, therefore, is “to reward disingenousness, gross disrespect for the courts this Honorable Commission, and repeated abuse of the judicial process,” MORE Power said.