MORE Power: Who’s running PECO now?

By: Francis Allan L. Angelo

When Randy Pastolero, the former vice president for operations and general manager of Panay Electric Company (PECO), resigned in July 2019, a big question arose – who is calling the shots as far as the overall technical operation of the distribution utility is concerned?

This was the reaction of MORE Electric and Power Corp (MEPC) to the accusations of PECO Head of Public Engagement and Government Affairs Marcelo Cacho that MORE Power was using the twin blackouts last week to besmirch PECO’s reputation.

In a statement, MEPC said Cacho did not answer the questions they raised when the Razon-led firm accused PECO of committing grave disservice to consumers because of its failure to manage the power outage.

“There is no need to taint the image of franchise-less PECO because the Ilonggo consumers know their state and are already fed up. From a balut vendor in Iloilo City to the president of the country, everybody knows how bad their services are,” MEPC said.

“We know how complicated the operation of electricity utility that is why this must be run by a competent and licensed Electrical Engineer,” it added.

MEPC said it learned that PECO has entrusted to a master electrician the firm’s technical operations after Pastolero retired from the company.

This violates Republic Act No. 7920 (Electrical Engineering Law) which classifies the electrical engineering profession into three grades:

-Master Electrician who can handle/supervise electrical systems of up to 600 volts only;

-Registered Electrical Engineer who can handle/supervise systems of up to 69,000 volts.

-Professional Electrical Engineer who can handle all electrical power systems, protections and coordination, regardless of voltage.

The first blackout occurred evening of Oct 29 where Iloilo City suffered at least five hours of power interruption due to technical problems on the part of the National Grid Power Corp. and Panay Energy Development Corp., the main power supplier of PECO.

But NGCP said it was able to restore power grid operations 30 minutes after the outage.

On Oct 30, the city again suffered a black out that lasted for almost 12 hours due to faults in NGCP’s Negros-Panay submarine cable which was restored after two hours.

MEPC noted that other distribution utilities in Panay and Negros immediately resumed normal operations when NGCP stabilized the grid but it took PECO 12 long hours to do so.

PECO insisted that the problem was with the NGCP clearance and the slow restart of PEDC’s coal-fired power plants which usually takes 3 to 6 hours.

But energy experts said PECO should not rely on one supplier for the bulk of its power demand so that it will not be tied up with this kind of situation.

Iloilo City’s peak power demand is 125 megawatts (MW) and 80MW is sourced from Global Business Power Corp subsidiaries PEDC (operator of the coal-fired power plants) and Panay Power Corp (which runs the diesel plant) using their rate embedded transmission line..

All power plants are located at Brgy. Ingore, LaPaz.

Only 45MW of the city’s power requirement is drawn from the grid which is managed by NGCP.