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TACLOBAN City ? Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone said he believed that a separate grid for Eastern Visayas would ensure a steady supply of electricity for the region.
"My proposal is for the region to be removed from the Visayas grid and to make us an independent grid. This will ensure the region a reliable, continued and even cheaper power cost," Evardone said on Saturday.
He said he saw no reason for Eastern Visayas to be suffering from a powerful shortfall, with the Tongonan geothermal power plants located in the region.
Evardone said he would discuss the matter with other governors and congressmen in the region.
He admitted that securing financing for a separate grid could take years.
Evardone was not the first governor in the region to push for a separate grid. Leyte Gov. Jericho Petilla had aproposed the same thing, although he wanted Leyte to have its own grid on ground that the province had jurisdiction over Tongonan, the geothermal-rich village that straddles the town of Kananga and Ormoc City.
For a week now, the whole Visayas has been experiencing rotating one-hour brownouts due to a power shortfall of up to 200 megawatts.
Evardone said that in Eastern Samar, the daily power outages were becoming frequent because the province's sole power electric cooperative, the Eastern Samar Electric Cooperative, had resorted to power shedding because of the shortfall.
The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) through corporate communications officer in the Visayas Belinda Canlas earlier explained that the power shortfall was due to the shutting down of power plants located in Cebu and in Leyte.
The power plants, the 50-MS Cebu Thermal I Plant and the 120-MW Mahanagdong power plant in Leyte, were shut down temporarily due to repair works, Canlas said.
Unit 2 of Mahanagdong is expected to be back online on Febr. 8. /Inquirer
