Veco to mark 110th year on Feb. 25
CEBU’S distribution utility Visayan Electric Company (Veco) will mark its 110th birth into the power industry on Feb. 25.
Veco will commemorate its anniversary with a historical retrospective, starting with the search for its oldest living customer to a series of community lectures to highlight the company’s evolution and contribution toward the progress of Metro Cebu.
Veco started in Feb. 25, 1905, when a group of enterprising American engineers, namely, Martin Levering, Albert Bryan, R. R. Landon and A.A. Adenbrook established Cebu’s first electric company named the Bryan and Landon Electricity with an initial capital of P250,000.
The indigenous source of electricity at that time was a coal-fired single-cylinder 350 H.P. Corliss steam engine-driven generating unit housed at a coal ash dump site in Ermita. This generated 1,500 kilowatts of power supplying electricity to only the populous sections of the then municipality of Cebu.
On the same year, the company was purchased by Dr. Mamerto Escaño, a former municipal councilor of Cebu, who then renamed it to Visayan Electric Com- pany S.A. VECO was then able to get a franchise to operate in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental. Don Mamerto was the first elected president and general manager.
On Dec. 8, 1928, Governor General Henry L. Stimson approved Act 3499, granting Veco a new franchise under which electric service was extended to Mandaue, Consolacion, Liloan, Compostela and Danao to the north and Talisay, Minglanilla, San Fernando and Naga to the south.
During World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army sequestered Veco. After the war, the management was returned to Don Mamerto and his new partners, Don Gil Garcia and Salvador Sala. The construction of the Ermita Power Plant was completed in 1951 and from then on, power demand continued to increase to this day.
Today, Veco is the second largest private electric utility in country, with a franchise service covering an area of about 674 kilometers with an estimated 1.73 million population. Demand for power is at 460 megawatts for its present 370,000 customers in its franchise area of the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, Talisay and Naga and the municipalities of Minglanilla, San Fernando, Liloan and Consolacion.