Acting Mayor Israel Salanga on Friday, April 12, called on the Central Negros Electric Cooperative to take proactive measures to prevent lengthy brownouts in Bacolod City.
A power outage hit Bacolod City 9:30 p.m. Thursday night and lasted for close to five hours in some areas.
Salanga said he spoke to CENECO acting general manager Arnel Lapore on Friday to ask for an explanation on what caused the blackout and what can be done to prevent such lengthy occurrences.
Lapore informed him that measures will be taken to try to prevent such lengthy brownouts, Salanga said.
Ceneco will conduct a technical survey of its power lines and substations, Lapore said.
The CENECO manager said the power outage was caused by a broken wire at the Bacolod-Alijis 69KV line that serves as lightning arrester.
“The stress and heat could have been the cause of its breakage. It resulted to the manual shutdown of the Alijis feeder to prevent an accident while repair was going on,” Lapore said.
Thousands of Bacolod residents in areas covered by the Alijis, Mountain View and Burgos feeders were affected or 15 to 20 percent of Ceneco’s service area.
Councilor Salanga was appointed acting mayor of Bacolod Thursday and Friday.
He said the mayor accompanied the city’s barangay captains on a benchmarking trip to Hong Kong and Macau. They are expected to return to Bacolod on Sunday.
Vice Mayor El Cid Familiaran was at a Vice Mayors’ League of the Philippines convention in Butuan City.*