By Judy G. Quiros
DIGOS CITY, Davao del Sur, (PNA) — The business sector here is worried the persisting power outage is already seriously affecting the businesses in the province.
“It’s too much to experience two to three times power interruption a day, and has also caused fear among business owners. Net cafe opted to close down their businesses because it is no longer profitable and most of the computer units were damaged due to the brownouts,” Lyle Sept Raut, vice-president of the Mt. Apo Davao del Sur Chamber of Commerce and Industry said.
It was learned the province is experiencing six-hour daily brownouts due to lack of power supply.
The Davao del Sur Electric Cooperative (DASURECO) recently announced that the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) has imposed load curtailment to maintain 18 megawatts only for the three metering points of DASURECO to protect outage of Mt. Apo Geothermal Power Plant (MGPP) and diesel-run Southern Philippines Power Corporation (SPPC).
The power outages had aggravated recently by the bombing of the Kibawe-Nuling-Tacurong 138 kv transmission line, the cooperative said.
Due to the impact of the brownouts, Davao del Sur Governor Claude Bautista had urged DASURECO and NGCP to answer the public’s questions over the power outages, provincial information officer Bheng Sumatra said.
“It was the first time that we knew that the very cause of the outages was the power generation provided by NGCP, DASURECO has no fault since they are only on the distribution,” Sumatra said.
Sumatra, however, said the province is pinning hope on the ongoing P25.8 billion coal-fired power plant in Culaman, Malita of the San Miguel Corporation would solve the power problem in the province.
The project is now being fast tracked and be finished earlier than its 2016 target. The coal-fired plant in Culaman, Malita which costs P25.8 billion under San Miguel Corporation.
“Hopefully this will be done before the target year 2016 for this could supply power entirely on Davao del Sur and its neighboring places,” she said.