Saturday was a bad day to be stuck at home, as my area was struck with an unscheduled power failure that started just before noon and power was not restored until past 1am the following day.
As far as I can remember, that was the longest unscheduled power failure I have ever experienced, during a time when there was no typhoon signal hoisted over the Central Negros area by PAGASA. While the weather was definitely inclement, there was officially no typhoon, and yet the power went out for more than 12 hours.
The power went out at noon time, so given the previous track record of CENECO, I wasn’t very worried because in the past, these problems were usually resolved within 3 hours max. What I forgot to factor in was that we weren’t under CENECO anymore, and the new owner who is supposed to be much better, if all the shameless self-promotion is to be believed, hasn’t really proven anything yet.
Well, as the darkness deepened and the power remained out, any confidence I had reserved for Negros Power faded with the natural light. As much as I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, they have been unable to deliver and that is all that matters.
Based on previous experience, the critical parts of my home are equipped with more or less 3 hours of emergency battery power, just enough for a couple of lights and the wifi to stay on. That power source is connected to solar panels that allow us to stay online almost indefinitely when there is daylight, but the countdown timer starts when the sun goes down. Also, based on experience from previous super storms, I also have in storage a tiny genset, in case of such emergencies.
My problem that day was that the genset wouldn’t start, probably due to lack of attention and exercise. So we were fully dependent on batteries, which by 9pm had been depleted, despite all our power conservation measures.
To make matters worse, mobile data had also disappeared in my area. So we had no lights and no internet, and our home was at that point simply not ready for our power company to fail so terribly. Good thing it wasn’t too warm, and we had a couple of candles, so we survived the long night.
I had a lot of time to think about my life in the dark, and if I remember correctly, power-wise, what happened last weekend was worse than Yolanda or Odette, the two most powerful storms to hit our area in recent memory. In the case of those two epic storms, the power did go out, but in my area it was restored by nightfall.
That, of course, led me to wonder if NEPC is either worse than CENECO or if it is just terribly unlucky.
In our case last weekend, the biggest lag looks like it came from the trouble shooting, because once they figured out the problem, the response time was more or less within the standard of 3-4 hours for difficult situations. It took NEPC people around 7 hours to troubleshoot the problem that affected a major part of Silay and Talisay. Was that because all the experienced CENECO dudes are gone and those who are left didn’t know the system as well? Or are they just unluckier this time?
According to an update on FB, which came around 7 hours after the power went out, the source of the trouble was found at a remote area, in the middle of a field, with limited access for repair vehicles. That makes a good argument for just plain old bad luck causing the extended power outage, but we can also argue that if someone with more experience or a more intimate knowledge of the system were involved, they might have determined the cause of the problem while there was still daylight.
Either way, the terrible response time doesn’t make NEPC look good, especially now that it seems that they’ve been terribly unlucky quite a few times already, considering that they just started a couple of months ago. First it was that unfortunate business with the busted transformer in Alijis that led to days of rotating brownouts, followed shortly by one of the longest power failures in the recent history of the Silay-Talisay area.
While they may tout a supposedly impressive P5B development plan, as of now, based on our recent experience with how they have taken over what is supposed to be the crappy operations of CENECO, their poor performance on the onset makes it look like they need an expensive siruhano (witch doctor) to exorcise the bad luck, or for those who believe you make your own luck, more investments in better talent need to be a priority.
Either way, so far, based on the metric of response to power failures, NEPC is unfortunately failing to impress. The thing is, there is nothing we can do about it but hope that they get their bearings and hit their stride soon, because the sale of CENECO is not reversible and we are stuck with them for at least 25 years, as per their freshly delivered franchise.*
