Power Coops Owe P20-B
Unpaid Obligations To Electric Suppliers Could Lead To Blackouts
MANILA, Philippines — A number of electric cooperatives nationwide could lose their power supply unless they settle the P20-billion debts they owe to power suppliers.
A power shutdown could leave millions of the cooperatives’ customers in the dark.
The poor credit of electric cooperatives poses a serious problem to the power generators or those supplying electricity to power utilities which distribute it to residential end-users and businesses.
Based on data gathered from the National Electrification Administration (NEA), at least 10 electric cooperatives across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao have been served or about to be issued notices of supply disconnection – either by the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) or by the generation companies.
WESM served notices of suspension to Isabela I Electric Cooperative (ISELCO 1) in Northern Luzon and Camarines Sur II Electric Cooperative (CASURECO 2) and CASURECO 3 in the Bicol region. This means that the cooperatives can no longer draw part of their supply from the electricity spot market. Once the power to the cooperatives is cut off, their customers will suffer from brownouts or outages.
The other problem cooperatives are Lanao del Sur Electric Cooperative (LASURECO) in Mindanao, which has the biggest arrears: P5 billion; and the Albay Electric Cooperative Inc. (ALECO) in Bicol which owes the electricity spot market over P1 billion dues.
Also facing cut-offs are Samar 1 Electric Cooperative, Eastern Samar Electric Cooperative and Northern Samar Electric Cooperative in the Visayas grid.
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http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/373698/power-coops-owe-p20b
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One of the reasons the wife rented the house in the city was to get more reliable electrical service. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants if the provider went belly up? I wonder if any one has ever floated the idea of a local supplier independent of the regional companies? It may not even be legal there but I’ve seen it in the US in various circumstances. In the meantime if you folks have a big enough compound with multiple enterprises you should look into pooling your resources and buying a really big generator that would handle all your needs and free you from relying on the local service. That’s what we did on the island. A 6KW Chinese diesel which was originally for emergencies but now is used to power the store at my father-in-laws as well as the other four households there.
Well if we get another generator it would have to be a good one. The gas to operate it would be worse than paying the electric bill. We might have to have one bigger than 6 KW because I use a lot of electricity. I really don’t think that will happen though. Something probably will be worked out so we do not lose power.
The electric company here is pretty powerful, so I think that if anything, the government will have to step in and handle the situation somehow.
The power in Angeles is much more reliable now than it was 3-4 years ago. They were doing planned brownouts every other Saturday for quite some time and their efforts seem to have worked. Let’s hope it is the same in Calbayog. I remember the planned brownouts last December in Calbayog so its been happening for the last 9 months at least and probably longer. You would think they would be close to being finished.
Unless the government changes the 40% rule for foreign ownership, we won’t see any significant improvements in power reliability or speed improvements for the Internet. No competition equals no incentive.
I hope so, but we starting coming to Calbayog in 2006 and they have had brown outs the whole time. Actually I don’t think there were quite as many back then, so maybe they are trying to improve things.
If they are serious about building up Samar as a tourist attraction by 2016, then why don’t they put up power plants like in Mindanao using solar energy? Also they really need to do something about that 60-40 rule, you’re right. It’s ridiculous for a company to build here and not have controlling interest in their own business.
The power in the Philippines seems to be getting worse than ever and then you hear something like this. In Subic the brownouts are much worse the the were three years ago when we moved.Over the years they always say brown outs are so they can work on the system and they are getting more frequent.I think only way it will change is to bring in foreign companies to run them.
Wayne I’m hoping that something will be done. Naturally I can not survive here with an extended power outage. I would have to check into the Ciriaco Hotel or the Marju Krisel (and their nice pool) and that would waste plenty of money, but I just can’t afford a good generator at the moment. I don’t have a laptop, so the website will suffer too, not that it is making any money anyway. My Google ratings will suffer though.