Rolling Blackouts Set For Cebu

[Mr Lee]

Below is an email I just got. It seems that those of us in Cebu better be prepared for regular blackouts that will probably only get worse as the coming season is when the most people visit Cebu which will mean even more demand and no doubt lead to even more blackout times. Demand seems to exceed capacity and Cebu is growing in leaps and bounds, so it will only get worse. I have to wonder if this is a prelude to the elections?? Anyone knows if the area has actually grown that much to actually exceed capacity? Dear customers,Power supply in the Cebu-Negros and Panay (CNP) grid (where VECO belongs)remains to be of great concern in the coming months with no available powerreserves. Whenever, a single power plant serving the CNP grid breaks downor is under preventive maintenance, brownouts/power interruptions occur,especially during peak periods. For VECO, peak periods would mean from10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m.- 7:30p.m. During these times, consumption of electricity is at its highest.To minimize inconvenience on the part of the consumers, VECO is printingthis guide of areas to be interrupted IF A POWER SUPPLY SHORTAGE OCCURS.VECO will then implement a one-hour rotation brownout in Metro Cebu to helpease the power supply shortage problem.The schedule below is not a guarantee that you will be interrupted on yourassigned time. A manual load shedding (power interruption) scheme will beimplemented depending on the available power supply and the powerconsumption of the customers at that particular time. The advise on whetherVECO needs to interrupt certain areas will come from the National GridCorporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the company which serves as a traffic control center for power coming from the power suppliers and theneed for power by the distribution companies.For inquiries on the status of power interruptions, VECO customers may alsoinquire about power interruptions through our text broadcast by typingAskveco outage and send to: 2327 for Globe/Touch Mobile 3918326 for Smart/Talk n Text and Red Mobile 0917-8902327 for Sun Cellular usersP.S. Based on our records, you belong to Feeder CRT311 with a Time Durationof 10AM to 11AM (this is my feeder and what I should expect)

Edited October 4, 2012 by Jollygoodfellow

[retired]

Below is an email I just got. It seems that those of us in Cebu better be prepared for regular blackouts that will probably only get worse as the coming season is when the most people visit Cebu which will mean even more demand and no doubt lead to even more blackout times. Demand seems to exceed capacity and Cebu is growing in leaps and bounds, so it will only get worse. I have to wonder if this is a prelude to the elections?? Anyone knows if the area has actually grown that much to actually exceed capacity? Dear customers,Power supply in the Cebu-Negros and Panay (CNP) grid (where VECO belongs)remains to be of great concern in the coming months with no available powerreserves. Whenever, a single power plant serving the CNP grid breaks downor is under preventive maintenance, brownouts/power interruptions occur,especially during peak periods. For VECO, peak periods would mean from10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m.- 7:30p.m. During these times, consumption of electricity is at its highest.To minimize inconvenience on the part of the consumers, VECO is printingthis guide of areas to be interrupted IF A POWER SUPPLY SHORTAGE OCCURS.VECO will then implement a one-hour rotation brownout in Metro Cebu to helpease the power supply shortage problem.The schedule below is not a guarantee that you will be interrupted on yourassigned time. A manual load shedding (power interruption) scheme will beimplemented depending on the available power supply and the powerconsumption of the customers at that particular time. The advise on whetherVECO needs to interrupt certain areas will come from the National GridCorporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the company which serves as a"traffic control center" for power coming from the power suppliers and theneed for power by the distribution companies.For inquiries on the status of power interruptions, VECO customers may alsoinquire about power interruptions through our text broadcast by typingAskveco outage and send to: 2327 for Globe/Touch Mobile 3918326 for Smart/Talk n Text and Red Mobile 0917-8902327 for Sun Cellular usersP.S. Based on our records, you belong to Feeder CRT311 with a Time Durationof 10AM to 11AM (this is my feeder and what I should expect)

I have not seen anything like the notice above here in Northern Mindanao yet but i have run across several articles on -line that suggest power issues will be prevalent throughout most of the Philippines in coming years . it basically all comes down to production or supply and the fact that the Philippines is way behind it's current needs much less it's future ones . it takes years to get new supply on line and this country does a poor job of enticing foreign investment ( witness the oil price freeze ) . Unfourtanetly , i suspect it will just get worse everywhere before it gets better with growth locations like Cebu most likely to be the hardest hit .

[TheMason]

Cebu has a serious capacity problem. From articles I've read, generation is about 30% under capacity. I don't know if this is an issue or not, but Cebu gets some of its power from Luzon. When the recent storms hit Luzon there was an article in the paper about Cebu power shortages because the lines feeding it from Luzon were cut by the storms. Either way, I'd expect electricity supply to get worse in the next few years. As someone else mentioned, building new capacity takes time, money, and a good plan. I don't expect the local authorities to provide any of those 3 things. They'll just find a way to blame it on foreigners a few months before the elections and ignore the problem the rest of the time.

[Mr Lee]

Looks like we are definitely in for more brownouts in Cebu: Power outages seen until the end pf 2010 or beginning of 2011To date, Cebu has five power plants two in Naga and three in Toledo City that are still under construction, but these are expected to be initially operational in the late part of 2010 or early part of 2011.These five power plants have a total combined capacity of 580 megawatts.Read the whole story here

[johnb]

That explains a lot Lee, last week on two different occasions we were without power between 1-2 pm, we also had a 9 hour brown out from 10pm to 7am Thursday evening. we were told when we called Veco that they had made a public announcement and that the brown out was for maintenance reasons, normally our end of town is pretty stable power wise. Timing was on my side as I had just repaired my small generator [i had to fit a new carb]so we did have some power, but I've now been looking for a slightly bigger generator, I saw one downtown yesterday afternoon its a Chinese brand [ as is my existing one] 4 stroke air cooled 3.0kVAI managed to negotiate the price to 12,500 php but I'll have my wife go there on her own on Monday and see if she can get it lower, as always its a balance with the budget, I'd like to get a bigger one but were pushing it at 12,500 php, plus its only as a back up it not going to be used on a daily basis, I hope!

[Mr Lee]

That explains a lot Lee, last week on two different occasions we were without power between 1-2 pm, we also had a 9 hour brown out from 10pm to 7am Thursday evening. we were told when we called Veco that they had made a public announcement and that the brown out was for maintenance reasons, normally our end of town is pretty stable power wise. Timing was on my side as I had just repaired my small generator [i had to fit a new carb]so we did have some power, but I've now been looking for a slightly bigger generator, I saw one downtown yesterday afternoon its a Chinese brand [ as is my existing one] 4 stroke air cooled 3.0kVAI managed to negotiate the price to 12,500 php but I'll have my wife go there on her own on Monday and see if she can get it lower, as always its a balance with the budget, I'd like to get a bigger one but were pushing it at 12,500 php, plus its only as a back up it not going to be used on a daily basis, I hope!

John, my wife registered our email address the last time we paid a bill at their SM office and they email us ahead of time now and they will also send us text messages if we register for that. You can also check at the following links.Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/VECO_Cebu Become a fan of Visayan Electric Co. In FacebookAccess our website at www.veco.com.phI wish I could keep a generator in our condo to at least run fans while the power is out but I do not think that would be allowed, though maybe I can sneak one of the real small and quiet Honda units in there and keep it out on the patio because it does seem this is going to become a regular thing for at least another year or more and it can get pretty hot that time of day for us with the sun beating down on our patio. :thumbsup:

[johnb]

That explains a lot Lee, last week on two different occasions we were without power between 1-2 pm, we also had a 9 hour brown out from 10pm to 7am Thursday evening. we were told when we called Veco that they had made a public announcement and that the brown out was for maintenance reasons, normally our end of town is pretty stable power wise. Timing was on my side as I had just repaired my small generator [i had to fit a new carb]so we did have some power, but I've now been looking for a slightly bigger generator, I saw one downtown yesterday afternoon its a Chinese brand [ as is my existing one] 4 stroke air cooled 3.0kVAI managed to negotiate the price to 12,500 php but I'll have my wife go there on her own on Monday and see if she can get it lower, as always its a balance with the budget, I'd like to get a bigger one but were pushing it at 12,500 php, plus its only as a back up it not going to be used on a daily basis, I hope!

John, my wife registered our email address the last time we paid a bill at their SM office and they email us ahead of time now and they will also send us text messages if we register for that. You can also check at the following links.Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/VECO_Cebu Become a fan of Visayan Electric Co. In FacebookAccess our website at www.veco.com.phI wish I could keep a generator in our condo to at least run fans while the power is out but I do not think that would be allowed, though maybe I can sneak one of the real small and quiet Honda units in there and keep it out on the patio because it does seem this is going to become a regular thing for at least another year or more and it can get pretty hot that time of day for us with the sun beating down on our patio. :thumbsup:

Thanks for that Link we just registered, as for powering a fan or lights in your condo, your right a small generator would be ok on your patio, and some of those small branded ones are not so noisy, you could also buy a car battery and an inverter, I used that system in Uganda, I had a 100 amp hour battery [ same as the one in the projects vehicle] and a 300 watt inverter, this would run the standard low energy lighting and a small fan, I then put the battery on my truck the following day and recharged it, in your case because the brown outs are infrequent you could just recharge the battery on a standard plug in battery charger, with Battery and inverter your power source is silent.something else to chat about on your arrivalJohn Edited November 14, 2009 by johnb

[Mr Lee]

Thanks for that Link we just registered, as for powering a fan or lights in your condo, your right a small generator would be ok on your patio, and some of those small branded ones are not so noisy, you could also buy a car battery and an inverter, I used that system in Uganda, I had a 100 amp hour battery [ same as the one in the projects vehicle] and a 300 watt inverter, this would run the standard low energy lighting and a small fan, I then put the battery on my truck the following day and recharged it, in your case because the brown outs are infrequent you could just recharge the battery on a standard plug in battery charger, with Battery and inverter your power source is silent.something else to chat about on your arrivalJohn

Thanks John, that is an even better idea and less of a problem because I would not need to keep fuel around. We will talk and get together for sure when we get there and my wife and I are looking forward to meeting you and your wife in person. :thumbsup:

[Mr Lee]

I just got another email and it seems we may be in for more planned power outages and now and hour earlier. Below is a copy and paste of the email. This really sucks. Dear Sir/Ma'am,Power supply in the Cebu-Negros and Panay (CNP) grid (where VECO belongs)remains to be of great concernin the coming months with no available power reserves. Whenever, a singlepower plant serving the CNP gridbreaks down or is under preventive maintenance, brownouts/powerinterruptions occur, especially duringpeak periods. For VECO, peak periods would mean from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30a.m., 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.and from 5:30 p.m.- 7:30 p.m. During these times, consumption ofelectricity is at its highest.To minimize inconvenience on the part of the consumers, VECO is giving thisnotice as a guideIF A POWER SUPPLY SHORTAGE OCCURS. VECO will then implement a one-hourrotation brownoutin Metro Cebu to help ease the power supply shortage problem.Based on our records you belong to Feeder CARETTA 311. There is aprobability that your area will be interruptedfrom 9 A.M. to 10 A.M. CARRETA 311 covers the areas of Lorega, Zapatera,Hipodromo, Camputhaw, Capitol Site,Lahug, Guadalupe, Kalunasan, and Sapangdaku.The schedule above is not a guarantee that you will be interrupted on yourassigned time. A manual load shedding orpower interruption scheme will be implemented depending on the availablepower supply and the power consumptionof the customers at that particular time. The advise on whether VECO needsto interrupt certain areas will come fromthe National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the company whichserves as a traffic control center forpower coming from the power suppliers and the need for power by thedistribution companies.For inquiries on the status of power interruptions, VECO customers may alsoinquire about power interruptions through ourtext broadcast by typing Askveco outage and send to: 2327 for Globe/Touch Mobile 3918326 for Smart/Talk n Text and Red Mobile 0917-8902327 for Sun Cellular users Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/V...VECO_Cebu������ Become a fan of Visayan Electric Co. In Facebook, go towww.facebook.com/visayanelectriccompany. Access our website at www.veco.com.ph.Thank you very much.- ethel (Embedded image moved ETHEL TANEO-NATERA to file: pic24351.gif) Department Manager - CorpComm J. Panis St., Banilad,Cebu City (+6332) 2308326 local 6310 www.veco.com.ph

[johnb]

Hi Lee, As to now we havent recieved any emails from Veco regarding new load shedding schedules, you may remember from one of my older posts that I was going to buy a larger 3000w generator, well I picked one up down town last week, Its a gasoline four stroke, with overhead valve and has a running output of 2,800watt, its not branded but looks pretty much like the larger generator below, they finaly dropped the price [ with my wifes input] to 11,800 php.On monday the 23 November, pardo lost power from 6am till 3.30 pm, it was an unscheduled outage due to a fault at our local sub station, the new generator ran well and used less than half a tank over an eight hour period, my old generator [ again not branded but similar to the smaller one below] will run a fan or two and some low energy lights, plus on occasion run some small power tools or water pump, its a two stroke engine with a running load of 850watt and can be purchased new at approx 5,500 php, both of these generators have a facility to charge 12v DC batteries. John

Edited November 27, 2009 by johnb