KORONADAL CITY (MindaNews/30 September)– The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) is reinforcing its existing high-voltage transmission line from Matanao town in Davao del Sur to General Santos City in anticipation of growth load in the “Tuna Capital of the Philippines.”
Cynthia Perez-Alabanza said in a statement Monday that the company started constructing the new Matanao-General Santos 138-kilovolt (kV) line in October last year.
“The 70-kilometer transmission line project will support the capacity of the General Santos City Substation, which is expected to increase in 2015,” she said.
“The project aims to fully accommodate the expected load growth of the General Santos Substation to prevent future overloading and line tripping,” she added.
Another component of the project is the expansion on either end of the Matanao-General Santos 138-kV line, which includes the installation of power circuit breakers and corresponding accessories that will protect the substation equipment from damage in case of overloading, the NGCP said.
Perez-Alabanza said the transmission line project is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2014 while the substation expansion is scheduled to be finished in November 2014.
GenSan, as the city is popularly called, has experienced a construction boom since the last few years with the entry of new hotels and shopping stores, which include Robinsons and SM malls.
It is also home to six of the country’s seven tuna canneries.
The project, which is also part of the bigger initiative called Reliability Compliance Project I-Mindanao, has an Energy Regulatory Commission-approved budget of P623.5 million, Perez-Alabanza said.
The Reliability Compliance Project in Mindanao aims to enhance and expand NGCP facilities to be able to comply with the Philippine Grid Code’s requirement of N-1 contingency, or the ability of the transmission grid to operate normally despite the loss of a major system component.
NGCP is a private corporation in-charge of operating, maintaining and developing the country’s power grid. It transmits high-voltage electricity through “power superhighways” that include the interconnected system of transmission lines, towers, substations and related assets. (Bong S. Sarmiento/MindaNews)
