EDITORIAL – From darkness into light

When the Mindanao-wide blackout that hit the island past midnight on Easter Sunday, residents cursed the darkness and naturally blamed it all on the government. It is an automatic reaction, almost a reflex, because in a country that boasts of being one of the fastest rising economies in Asia, electricity is still a problem that causes major disruption for the people and endless embarrassment on the government. Not only are we paying the highest electricity rates in Asia, we are also paying for the most unreliable power service in this part of the world.
It did not help that the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), which was the apparent root of the problem, took its sweet time to explain the cause of the blackout. During the blackout itself it was all too silent, and even when the problem was fixed it did not reach out to provide an explanation. All that was said from its end was that the cause was still being investigated – a puzzling statement since it stood to reason that because they were able to fix it, then they surely must have found out what the cause was.
It was only yesterday that an official of NGCP divulged the cause – a broken stand connecting the Agus 7-Agus 6 tie line that in turn touched one of the capacitor voltage transformers (CVTs) at the switchyard. This set off a series of events that eventually plunged Mindanao into darkness for several hours just as the people were preparing for the celebration of Easter. The irony couldn’t have been more palpable: here was the Christian world celebrating the resurrection of the One called the Light, and darkness was enveloping the proceedings.
The NGCP’s explanation, of course, is only part of the greater whole. The bigger picture is that Mindanao’s power situation remains critical; it is so fragile that a single incident was able to send the entire island into a blackout lasting several hours. A lot of work still needs to be done to bring the island from darkness into light.