Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson welcomed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s intervention into the power supply problem in Negros, Panay and Guimaras islands that caused fluctuations and outages last week.
“The president has called the attention of everybody concerned so we should be expecting better stability in our power supply,” Lacson said on Tuesday, May 2.
The National Grid Corp. (NGCP) of the Philippines on Sunday announced the full restoration of power a day after the President intervened.
“It is good that the president did say that the national government is willing to enter into the picture” if NGCP could not solve the problem, Lacson said.
“As the president said it is so ironic that we (Negros) have surplus power but this thing is happening,” he said.
Marcos instructed the NGCP to immediately address the power crisis in Western Visayas, the Presidential Communications Office reported Tuesday.
NGCP was told to be transparent and continuously update local officials, distribution utilities, power generators, the Department of Energy, and the Energy Regulatory Commission of the status of the Visayas grid on a regular basis.
It was also instructed to synchronize the “protection relays of transmission, generation, and distribution” in the next two weeks to prevent massive blackouts.
The president also directed NGCP to finish the third stage of the
Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone project immediately, which involves linking Negros and Cebu by laying an overhead line from Bacolod City to San Carlos City then to Toledo City, Cebu through a submarine cable.
NGCP was also instructed to review the reliability of each Visayas sub-grid and fast-track the signing of the Ancillary Service Procurement Agreement with the ERC to manage power fluctuations.*