MORE Power ramps up modernization effort

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

 

With their legal woes behind them, MORE Electric and Power Corp will focus on modernizing the power distribution system of Iloilo City.

In an interview with Daily Guardian on Air over Aksyon Radyo-Iloilo on Saturday, MORE Power president and CEO Roel Z. Castro said part of their modernization program is the acquisition and installation of a 10 megavolt-ampere (MVA) mobile substation.

The P50-million substation will be stationed at Megaworld area in Mandurriao to augment the existing 30MVA substation.

Castro said the fast growth in Megaworld has stretched the capacity of the 30MVA substation.

“Next year, a new business processes outsourcing firm will start operations and that will require another 2 megawatts of power. We need to expand the capacity of Mandurriao substation because of the fast growth in the area,” he said.

The substation was shipped from Manila last week and arrived in Iloilo City on Sunday.

Engr. Fil Sonza, MORE Power Senior Manager for Power Systems Planning and Design, said the Mandurriao substation has almost hit its 30MVA capacity.

The 10MVA substation will be dedicated to Megaworld area to ease the load of the Mandurriao facility which will undergo preventive maintenance soon.

Apart from the 10MVA mobile substation, MORE Power will also purchase another 30MVA mobile substation and construct three more land-based substations, two of which will be stationed in Arevalo and Diversion Road in Mandurriao.

MORE Power operates five substations in the districts of Jaro, LaPaz, City Proper, Molo, and Mandurriao with a total capacity of 130 MVA.

Except for LaPaz substation which is still within 60 percent of its capacity, Castro said the loads of the rest of the facilities are over 90 percent against the normal load of 70 to 80 percent.

Castro added that they plan to double the total capacity of the substations to 260MVA in the next five years to cope with the growing demand for power in the city.

In the case of Molo substation, the distribution utility will ease its load by putting up a substation for Arevalo district.

The City Proper substation will be uprated to also increase its capacity in the next five years.

The planned Diversion Road facility will also ease the Mandurriao substation which is reaching full capacity because of numerous commercial establishments popping up in the area.

A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions.

Between the generating station and consumer, electric power may flow through several substations at different voltage levels. A substation may include transformers to change voltage levels between high transmission voltages and lower distribution voltages, or at the interconnection of two different transmission voltages.

MORE Power also installed reclosers or automatic circuit reclosers which are designed for use on overhead electricity distribution networks to detect and interrupt momentary faults.

A recloser is an automatic, high-voltage electric switch. Like a circuit breaker on household electric lines, it shuts off electric power when trouble occurs, such as a short circuit.

Where a household circuit breaker remains shut off until it is manually reset, a recloser automatically tests the electrical line to determine whether the trouble has been removed. And, if the problem was only temporary, the recloser automatically resets itself and restores the electric power.

Castro said two new reclosers were installed in Molo during the preventive maintenance works over a week ago.

The next stage of the modernization program is the installation of the supervisory control and data acquisition or SCADA which will manage the entire distribution system, especially the substations and feeders.

SCADA systems are used to monitor and control a plant or equipment in industries such as telecommunications, water and waste control, energy, oil and gas refining and transportation.

Sonza said the SCADA will help them monitor and control the distribution system.

“Using the SCADA, you can connect and automate the seven substations. From the office, we can see the substations, open or close them or even tie them up. We can also tie up one feeder to another. The bottom line is we can minimize widespread brownouts by isolating the affected area from the rest of the system through automated operations,” he added.

Engr. Wilmar Gonzaludo of the Project Development and Management department said they need to upgrade the substations, feeder, and reclosers so that the system will become compatible with SCADA.

Gonzaludo said the current electro-mechanical setup is not ideal with an automated system.

“We need to have a looping system which is the more ideal type because we can easily isolate the fault and maintain supply to the rest of the city. There is ongoing purchase SCADA readers because we will replace the electro-mechanical readers. The breakers will also be replaced by the type that is compatible with the SCADA system. With the SCADA, we don’t need to deploy people to the fault but we can just switch it off with the button. We can also detect faults in the feeders in our screens,” he added.

MORE Power also acquired thermal scanners that will monitor the status of transformers. These are like temperature scanners that will look into the load of equipment, the distribution wires, and feeder connections.

Temperature checks on the facilities are important as these will help MORE Power monitor if the lines and transformers are overloaded.

Part of the equipment upgrade is the acquisition of brand new manlift trucks that will enable personnel to reach and fix distribution lines.

“We ordered bucket and over trucks which are already in Iloilo. In the next two weeks, you will see the new trucks,” Castro said.

Castro said the modernization program is part of their more than P1-billion investment in the next five years to improve the distribution in Iloilo City.