CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (PIA) - A major power outage looms in Camiguinonce the island's submarine cable is damaged.
"This is a serious cause for concern for all Camiguingnons," Camiguin Gov. Jurdin Jesus M. Romualdo said, raising concern over the deteriorating condition of the island's submarine cable.
He said the island's undersea cable that linked power from mainland Mindanao has only a lifetime of 25 years. The submarine cable was laid in 1987.
This prompted the Camiguin Electric Cooperative (Camelco) to conduct a series of public hearings in the five municipalities to appraisethe people about the power situation in this island province and find solution to the problem.
Romualdo warned that unless remedies are taken now, Camiguin will be like Siargao Island that just experienced a prolonged blackout after its underwater power line was reported broken off due to wear and tear.
"We are not sure when it (blackout) will happen to us, it may be tonight, tomorrow or next year," the governor said at the public hearing conducted at the Mahinog gym recently.
"But we are working as fast as we can to prepare for it," he added, aware that the situation could have serious repercussion in the island's economy.
Earlier, the provincial government had already purchased power generating sets to ensure uninterrupted power supply at the Camiguin General Hospital.
"I want to ensure that if this happens, business is as usual in our hospital because life is important to me," the governor said in thelocal dialect.
For his part, Camelco manager Adrian A. Ebcas presented several options to solve the capacity requirement problem and probable blackouts.
One option, he said, is the immediate replacement of aging submarine cable with the installation of 13.2-kilovolt (kV) submarine cable including acquisition of 69-kV line, among others, to reduce systems loss and to also save consumers from constant payment of Residual Connection Charges to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
This, he said, will cost the electric cooperative over P400 million in loans to finance the project and for the consumers to pay P2 perkilowatt-hour (kW-h) more on its bill from the present P10 per kWh to recover the investment cost.
Another option, instead of buying power from the mainland, Camelcowill just invite independent power producer (IPP) to build eight-megawatt (MW) diesel plant in Camiguin.
For this option, he said, electric consumers will bear the burden of paying additional P6 per kWh on top of the current rate.
On the other hand, Ebcas disclosed that Camiguin, according to theDepartment of Energy, has resource potential for wind energy sourcesthat can be developed and this is situated in Lowan in the town of Mahinog.
This, if developed, could provide substantial power supply for Camiguin with a generation capacity from 15-MW to 25-MW and could even export its excess power to the mainland.
Camiguin, as of now, has a power demand of 2.8-MW and is expected to reach by seven-MW in 15 years, it was learned.
Ebcas said the best way to cope with the situation is to install anew submarine cable to replace the old ones, adding submarine cable is also necessary once Camiguin will finally have its own source of wind energy and export power to the mainland.
