Three major call centers in Bacolod City were forced to operate on back-up power for over 12 hours now due to a blackout caused by the failure of a 13-year-old 30/37MVA power transformer at the Alijis Substation.
The outage occurred at around 8:53 PM on August 21, affecting Teleperformance, Transcom, and Teletech with a combined workforce of over 10,000 employees. While the power disruption did not lead to significant work stoppages at these facilities, it impacted employees working from home within the Alijis Feeder area.
The following areas were affected by the outage:
- AF1: Portions of Alijis Road, Bacolod Girl’s Home, Prk. Pag-asa, John B. Lacson College, Pauline Village, ECC Villas, Akina Village, South Residences, Araneta Highway, and several subdivisions.
- AF2: Portions of Alijis Road, Greenplains Subd., Araneta Street, Magsaysay Ave., Teleperformance, Bacolod Police Station, Goldenfield Commercial Complex, Magsungay, Torres High School, Henrietta Village, Airport Subd., Calong-Calong, Villa Esperanza, Palmas Del Mar, and several subdivisions.
- AF3: Alijis Road, Yanson, Villa Baradas, Prk. Gaisano, Celita Village, Olympia Village, La Villa Guadalupe Phase 1&2, Camilla South, Bacolod Homes Royal, Pedrosa Village, Mt. Carmen Village, Regent Pearl-Alijis to Panaad Site, and several subdivisions.
- AF4: TRANSCOM, Back of Alijis Substation, Oriental & Motolite, A1 Gas, Viva, Alijis Road, Bacolod Memorial Park, Asian Alcohol, Sasson Furniture, Jade Court II, VL Yap, Good Year, Teletech (Robinsons Metro), and Lopue’s South Square.
- AF5: Baronnesa Metal Corporation.
- AF6: Portions of Alijis Road, Prk. Progreso, Bacolod City National High School, City Heights, Puentebella Subd., Jocson Subd., Prk. Kabulakan, Villa Celia, Villa Socoro, Espinos Village, Suntal Village, Eufemia, Teres 1 & 2, Rio Vista, BM ACMA, Benares, Victorina Heights, Bakyas, JJ Gonzaga, Purity Home Owner’s Asso., CERES Motorpool, P & NB Subd., Akina Plains, Prk. Himaya, Riverside Village, Golden Village, and portions of Mansilingan.
- AF7: New Coca-Cola Plant (Mansilingan)
Negros Electric & Power Corporation (NEPC) Chief Operating Officer Engineer Bernard Bailey R. Del Castillo explained that the outage was due to a transformer failure at the Alijis substation. And while they attempted to recovery the transformer, he said that they were unable to restore power due to an internal fault that requires a replacement.
As a temporary solution, NEPC implemented load transfers to adjacent substations in Murcia and Sum-ag.
As of 2:49 AM on August 22, power was restored in AF1. However, residential consumers under Alijis Feeder 3 may have to wait for up to 24 hours for power to be fully restored, according to Del Castillo.
He explained that AF3 would be temporarily connected to the Murcia substation and the process would require laying approximately 7 kilometers of new wires, which could take some time to complete.
The Alijis substation has a peak capacity of 32 megawatts, covering 7 feeders. Del Castillo said that NEPC expects to resume power for Alijis Feeders 2 & 4, where call centers are connected, within the day.
However, he said that in case of overloading, NEPC may have to implement manual load dropping, prioritizing key accounts with back-up power to minimize disruptions to residential consumers.
Del Castillo said it will take 2 weeks at the minimum to replace the damaged transformer.
Meanwhile, key accounts such as Coca-Cola and Metal Corporation may remain offline due to the outage, Del Castillo said. Their key account officers are now coordinating with this business, he added.
