KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews/16 May) — With the elections over, North Cotabato will again experience power outages starting Friday, an official of the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco) said.
Cotelco general manager Godofredo Homez said their advisory on load curtailment for North Cotabato came from the National Power Corporation (Napocor).
The reserved power for Mindanao, which came from the hydroelectric plants at the Agus complex in Lanao del Sur and Pulangi in Bukidnon, has already been used to service the whole island for three days since Monday.
Homez said Napocor had started to increase the volume of water for the hydroelectric plants weeks before the elections.
The firm released the water starting May 12.
“The continued power we experienced during the past days was Napocor’s commitment to ensure continuity of the election process – from casting votes until proclamation of winners,” said Homez.
“If there were fluctuations during election time in some parts of Mindanao, including North Cotabato, the power firm was able to restore it the soonest time possible”, he stressed.
Starting Friday, Cotelco’s service areas will again experience rotating brownouts from three to four hours daily.
The brownouts, Homez said, would usually happen during peak hours – from 8 am until 12 noon, and from 3pm until 6 pm.
For this month, Cotelco, based on the power purchase contract it signed with Napocor, will only get 10MW, which is only 31 percent of the total electricity needs of at least 98,000 power consumers in North Cotabato.
The province needs 32MW during peak hours, Homez said.
To offset the deficiency, Cotelco buys additional 8MW from the power barges of the Therma Marine, Inc. located in Maco, Compostela Valley. (Malu Cadelina Manar/MindaNews)