After the approval of House Bill 9805 by the majority of the members in the House of Representatives in the third and final reading of the 19th Congress, Power Watch Secretary General Wennie Sancho foresees the approval of this bill into a law once it will be submitted to the President for his action.
“We are expecting big things to happen in the power industry once this bill will be signed into law by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. We shall witness the implementation of the Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) which was already ratified by the CENECO consumers in a plebiscite. The JVA defines the terms and conditions to be followed during the transition period once the legislative franchise is granted and becomes effective,” a press release from Power Watch said.
The granting of the franchise to NEPC by Congress shall be a big challenge for the consumers and for NEPC as a distribution utility. Power Watch Negros have very high expectations from NEPC to deliver quality, reliable, and secure power supply, and to perform its intended function of providing excellent services to the consumers.
Most consumers believed that the “changing of the guards” from CENECO to NEPC is good riddance, a deliverance from decades of inconvenience and inefficient services brought about by mismanagement and abuse of power by the people who had been sworn to serve the consumers. To some, NEPC is like a knight in shining armor that would protect the welfare of the consumers, who are in distress. All eyes are now on NEPC to see if indeed it possesses a saving grace, the press release added.
There are some observers who think that NEPC will save CENECO as an ailing cooperative which largely decreased its power reliability because of its current equipment’s age, which also decreased its power utility value. Rehabilitation requires a large amount of repair cost. There is a need for Power System Reliability Evaluation upon the take-over of NEPC in the operation of CENECO in order to handle changes in the system such as aging electrical devices. Power system equipment like transformers, we should be concerned with their failure indices. Each electrical equipment should be coherent with its existing period. Most of CENECO’s equipment are no longer in their “useful life” periods, but are already in the “wear-out” periods, the press release claimed further.
After its rehabilitation with the installation of cyber-technology, NEPC will develop fast incident detection and diagnosis so that the grid is able to prevent propagation of failure, according to reliable sources, it alleged.
NEPC then, as expected, will be elevated with enhanced communication technologies and control systems that shall provide continuous electrical energy to the consumers at the lowest possible price and desirable service quality, NEPC is expected to provide power security which is the ability to handle any kind of power disturbances. Thus, any service interruption is no longer acceptable for the NEPC customers, the press release concluded.*
