The massive power outage in Bacolod City that was caused by the failure of a transformer at the Alijis Substation, which used to be owned and operated by the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (CENECO), but is now the responsibility of the Negros Power Corporation, after the latter was easily able to gobble up the former via a joint venture agreement, has been the talk of the town of late, especially for those who live in southern Bacolod, where it is said that 47,000 consumers are affected.
Note that a consumer is a household, so given a conservative multiplier of 3 people per household, that would mean around 150 thousand Bacolodnons must have been suffering from rotating brownouts ever since Wednesday night, when the transformer catastrophically failed.
Looking at the news reports on the incident, it is interesting to see how the narrative is being controlled.
One of the more common talking points being bandied around is that the 37 MVA transformer that failed is 13 years old, and it has been operated by CENECO, which apparently used it in an overloaded state most of the time. This is obviously the narrative being pushed by Negros Power, the new owner/operator, who is unfortunate enough to have just taken over when the massive power failure occurred.
First of all, allow me to clarify that I was against the idea of the JVA that sold CENECO, a AAA rated, mega large classified electric cooperative, to a private entity. My main argument here is that I was disappointed by the fact that the supposed stewards of the cooperative were the first to surrender it to the corporate raider. It was like having a chastity belt that didn’t even bother to close the legs of the virgin whose modesty it was supposed to protect.
Anyway, that corporate takeover that I still find intriguing and interesting is another story, but the fact of the matter is that the suits already won and CENECO has been sold.
For now, let us focus on the power struggles that the new owner has suddenly found itself in.
First of all, I don’t think that NEPC was surprised at what happened because as a big business owned by a tycoon, it must’ve done its due diligence. It not only knows that the electric coop business model and profit margins is bullet proof, which would be the primary reason why the mega-large CENECO was targeted, it also knows the status of its equipment. It was just their bad luck that the Alijis transformer decided to give way just as they took over.
One way they have tried to spin the FUBAR is the focus on the age of the transformer: 13 years old. That may sound like an old piece of equipment, especially for people who now think in terms of smart phone service life, but if you come to think of it, the service life of such a transformer is 20-30 years.
The next talking point is that CENECO owned and operated it and it was overloaded. Granted, that CENECO has a really bad reputation, which would probably be its own doing, and could also happen if you have a management team that wants to sell the business rather than fix its problems. However, if the Alijis transformer in question was really overloaded, then let us wait and see what size transformer the new operator replaces it with. If they put in the same size/rating, then it will just be overloaded again right?
Has CENECO really been that mismanaged? Is NEPC the knight in shining armor we have been waiting for? Does it really matter that we gave away our electric cooperative? Or do we just want quality and reliable electricity, regardless of who delivers it to us?
These are questions that we are now asking because of the Alijis transformer failure. And if you ask me, it can be a good thing for us consumers because such an embarrassing catastrophe has put the NEPC on the back foot, and it has now to work double time to impress us, especially since it packaged itself as the anti-CENECO during a time when CENECO was synonymous with inefficiency and unreliability. Hopefully, this incident gives us the advantage that we lost when we sold CENECO to the first bidder (certainly not the highest).
If there is a potentially good side, there is also the other of this situation we now find ourselves in. Ever since we let go of our power over CENECO’s rights to manage the electric cooperative, there isn’t really much we can do if it turns out that the business that bought it sucks, because that is the difference between being in a cooperative and being just a customer to a monopoly. In a cooperative, we are stakeholders who can actually make demands from the management that we install, especially if we take our roles in the coop seriously. As customers, no matter how much we pay, when the service sucks, we can only complain to customer service.
The die has been cast. CENECO is no more. Negros Power is in charge of our power now. All we can do now is hope that they can really deliver on their promises and provide us with much better service and more reliable power. Also, whatever they make from us in terms of profit is hopefully smaller than what we have been losing to the inefficiency of a non-profit coop that has been cursed with mismanagement for what feels like decades.*
