Emergency BROWN-OUT AGAIN!

Dumaguete is now known as a City of Brown-outs. Tomorrow, Sunday, a brown-out has been scheduled from morning 'til early evening. You know what that means---everything stops. Those without generators (which is majority of the population) will head off to beaches or those who have the budget will check into hotels, people will feel antsy and will all want to go out to have some air.
I wonder when NORECO II will improve its services. It does nothing but disappoint its consumers.

 

Shortly after we retired here, (10 years ago). We bought a Gen-Set and I installed a transfer switch. NORECO II sent someone out to inspect my install job. When he saw the cover on the switch, that I had marked "GEN and BROWN- OUT". He ask what I meant by the markings. I told him that BROWN- OUT was NORECO II family name. He apparently did not think that was funny and I didn't either. My transfer switch is still to this day marked "GEN and BROWN- OUT". So Dumaguete need not feel bad about dealing with numerous monthly BROWN- OUT because Valencia have been dealing with numerous monthly BROWN- OUT for more years that I have been retired here.
Remember it is more fun here in the PI.
Go buy a Gen-Set it is cheeper that losing the perishables in refrigerators, freezers several times a year. When I lived in Alaska I had a Gen-Set more that 30 of the 35 years I lived there. Alaska didn't have many Black Out but when they did they lasted from a couple of days to more that a month. I learned the Black Out lesson long before I moved here and that is no .

 

It is a small domestic, gas or diesel powered, electrical set that makes electricity, short for "generator set". The one I have is a "Best and Strong 5,000". The ones you will see today are not really generator, they are actually alternators. Mine is up and running now powering the hole house.

 

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived here 33 years ago was the wires on the power poles. The power lines nailed to and run through the TREES. NORECO workers going around in petty cab with bamboo laters on top. I have noticed some small improvements over the years. I am not going to hold my breath waiting for them to come up to a better standard.

 

Agree. The rates charged by NORECO are in the area of 10php per kilowatt hour. That is very high in comparison to other countries, double that of the US. That is not to say NORECO should be as cheap as the US but considering that the source is also very cheap geothermal energy and much lower labor rates, they should comparatively have a fairly good amount of funds to work with.

And we do see improvements in the distribution such as the replacement of wood power poles with the steel structures. However, the fact is that with all of that improvement, the frequency of brown outs is getting worse.

I remember that China was in a similar situation prior to their expansion to become a market economy but as that country grew, the brown outs became less and less; I suppose that was due to demand by the new manufacturing companies that energy become more reliable. In the Phils we are also expanding economically to favor market expansion and indeed, efforts are being taken to support that such as internet bandwidth improvement. But the power grid remains locked in 1940’s technology.

We look forward to a time when improvements in that sector improve; cheap energy (such as nuclear) would appear not to be the answer. It seems to be more than that, such as a goal to have near zero brown outs, perhaps by redundant systems to take over when systems go down, and by ending highly disruptive practices such as blacking out entire regions for system maintenance as is being done today.


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