NGCP restores power disrupted by fallen tree

By Cheneen R. Capon
The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) confirmed that the power outage in the Davao City Wednesday happened after its Toril 138 kilovolt (kV) transmission line 1 tripped at around 2:40 p.m. yesterday.
Milfrance Q. Capulong, NGCP corporate communication officer for Mindanao, told EDGE Davao yesterday that line was damaged by a fallen tree but was also repaired at around 3:52 p.m. on the same day.
The fault in the transmission line resulted in the one 150-megawatt unit of the coal-fired power plant of Therma South Inc., a subsidiary of Aboitiz Power, “to automatically shutdown as a precautionary measure” because the “energy produced by the power plant will have nowhere else to go.”
Wilfredo Rodolfo III, branding and communications manager for Mindanao of the Aboitiz Power, told EDGE Davao that measure was implemented to prevent the Easter Sunday blackout years ago after the STEAG coal-fired power plant tripped down.
“TSI power plant was not down. It’s okay this entire time. It was NGCP line that went down,” Rodolfo clarified.
Rodolfo said the plant started to be up after the line was repaired around 4 p.m. yesterday. However, “it will take several hours before the plant to start up and synchronize to the grid.”
Meanwhile, the Davao Light and Power Company (DLPC) announced that incident could have caused four hours of rotating power interruption in its franchise area which include Davao City, Panabo City, and other municipalities in Davao del Norte.
However, the NGCP was able to repair the transmission line around 3:42 yesterday.
Rossano C. Luga, assistant vice president for reputation enhancement of DLPC, said the distribution utility has to assess as how many hours they will implement now that all the two units of TSI are synchronized to the Mindanao grid.