The House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy on Thursday held its second hearing on the power outage that struck Western Visayas first on April 27, 28 and 29 last year, and again on January 2, 3 and 4, barely a day after the New Year celebrations.

Committee chairperson Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Jay Q. Velasco said the hearing is being conducted to investigate and hear from the stakeholders and concerned agencies their explanations why they failed to prevent the massive power outage or immediately resolve it.

“We are committed to form policies that would provide safe, secure, reliable, and sufficient power to all our electricity consumers in the countryside, and that we advocate for a more diverse and stable sources of power to protect our economy, our industries, and most especially, our household electricity consumers,” he said.

“It is necessary to discuss and study the root cause of the problem so that both short-term and long-term solutions will be crafted and implemented,” he added.

Meanwhile, Iloilo City Rep. Julienne Baronda expressed her fear that “the power outage of this magnitude taking place for the second time in less than a year is a portent of things to come.”

“As a result of the region-wide blackout’s disruption to our lives and the economy, the Ilonggo people would like to know who is or are accountable, and more importantly, what fines or penalties can be imposed against these individuals or entities for their inefficiency or malfeasance or nonfeasance,” she said.

During the hearing, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) president Anthony Almeda maintained that the company handled its system in compliance with the rules.

“We adhere to the data and protocols explicitly outlined in our Philippine Grid Code. It is important to emphasize that we handled the system in compliance with the rules and using resources at our disposal during that period,” he said.

He also reiterated the call of NGCP for the inclusion of generation planning and resource assessment in formulating the country’s energy development roadmap.

“We support the green energy initiative of the government, but we ask that green baseload technologies like Baseload Nuclear be explored. We want to be part of the solution, but NGCP cannot do it alone,” Almeda said.

He also sought the cooperation of energy stakeholders and the entire government “to ensure the stability of transmission services that will support the reliable power supply for Filipinos.”

NGCP officials likewise committed to submit the details as to why the advisories to the Department of Energy (DOE) and Energy Regulation Commission (ERC) were cut off during the tripping of power plants in Western Visayas.

This was after Deputy Majority Leader and Iloilo 3rd District Rep. Lorenz Defensor raised a query on why the NGCP failed to issue an advisory from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on January 2, when the power plants tripped that caused the island-wide blackout in Panay.

The Panay Energy Development Corporation (PEDC) Unit 1 shut down at 12:06 p.m. The other plants followed at around 2:19 p.m.

Following the April power outage, it was agreed during the previous hearing that the NGCP would provide advisories at every given time. However, they failed to do it on January 2 during the said critical hours.

Clark Agustin, NGCP Visayas Operations System Head, said they would find out why it happened, though he claimed that they sent messages through SMS when the power plants tripped.

Defensor also expressed dismay upon learning that no one has been penalized by the concerned government agencies for the two similar incidents of power shortage in Western Visayas.

“I can’t believe that for a period of almost a year, wala tayong resolution (we have not had any resolution) from the government agencies that are supposed to oversee the energy industry,” he said, adding that he expects to see in the final committee report that someone should be made to answer for the supposed liabilities incurred by Western Visayas, particularly, by Iloilo.

Present during the hearing were local government officials of the region who narrated their experiences during the latest incident, including its serious impacts in their respective business sectors.

Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor stressed that someone should be held responsible for the incident, but believed it’s more important to find a long-term solution to the problem.

He also reiterated his call for the establishment of the Cebu-Panay backbone project, which he said could prevent the repetition of similar power outages in the Visayas. (PNA)

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