Upon Duterte order, Palawan power coop improves service

Palawan Electric Cooperative (Paleco) has reported an improvement in its power distribution service as it reduced the interruption frequency and duration by at least 50 percent after undertaking several concrete actions to address technical issues.

In a statement, Paleco chairman Jeffrey Tan-Endriga said the cooperative has been doing its best to improve its services, particularly its reliability indices.

“As a matter of fact, if we compare the SAIDI and SAIFI between the time when President Duterte precautioned the privatization of power distribution services in Palawan and what we have now, interruption frequency and duration experienced by our customers have significantly reduced by at least 50 percent,” Tan-Endriga said.

SAIFI is the average number of interruptions that a customer would experience while SAIDI is used as a reliability indicator by electric power utilities.

Tan-Endriga said power outages are not just coming from the distribution side, but also from transmission and generation.

To address this problem, Paleco implemented continuous massive clearing of trees in the entire coverage area; continuous conduct of regular thermal scanning of power substation equipment and distribution lines to prevent hotspots; transformer load management; massive inspection, re-sealing, modification and change of defective big load kwh meters and instrument transformers; meter clustering of residential consumers along squatter, coastal and other areas with suspected pilferages, coordination of protective devices, improvement of grounding system and capacitating of technical personnel on distribution maintenance and substation operation.

The electric cooperative (EC) has also identified problems which caused unreliable electricity and have sought to address it.

“For Paleco, these unplanned power interruptions are caused mostly by heavy vegetation and wildlife incursion attributed to the vast forest cover of Palawan. Unfortunately, DENR and local government policies are stringent in Palawan which limit Paleco to conduct massive line clearing to protect the integrity of the lines,” Tan-Endriga said.

Additionally, the company official said at least 40 percent of the total power interruptions recorded from January to May are attributed to power plants which may be caused by abnormal engine tripping, old-aged generating units, and uncoordinated protection equipment settings between some of new power players, National Power Corp. and Paleco.

“Lastly, the current dispatch protocol was needed to be fixed due to being opposed to the concept of merit order as well as the directive of the Senate committee on energy, gives priority to less reliable and more expensive power providers,” he said.

To further improve its service, Paleco is working on several key projects which include the installation of additional substations in at least three locations to correct quality of electrical operations parameters (voltage, frequency, current) and improve the reliability of power delivery to consumers in far-flung areas.