The widespread outage across the islands of Siargao and Bucas Grande in Surigao del Norte has been addressed after the Siargao Electric Cooperative, Inc. (SIARELCO) repaired a damaged power line in one of its submarine cables, according to the National Electrification Administration (NEA).
In a statement over the weekend, NEA said SIARELCO fully restored access to electricity in its entire franchise area, ending a 13-day blackout. The issue was attributed to a major line fault that occurred on December 1 and took over a week to be located and identified.
NEA Administrator Antonio Mariano Almeda visited Siargao on Saturday to commission some of the modular generator sets that will help augment power supply in the island. He acknowledged the resilience of SIARELCO and its stakeholders who adapted to the situation.
“We thought of ways to ease the problem of Siargao because it will take time to repair the submarine cable… The good news was, by the time I arrived at 9:00 a.m., the submarine cable was repaired… and before I left by around 2:00 p.m., the whole island has been energized,” he said over DZRH on Sunday.
Almeda noted, however, that the power cable is working under limited capacity, which requires the operations of generator sets to meet the 16-megawatt demand of SIARELCO customers. “So, our original timetable of December 20 has been advanced, it came early,” the NEA chief added.
“This achievement would not have been possible without the successful repair of the submarine cable, through the expertise and efforts of the divers from Ocean-pro Marine Services and the technical experts from ACAA, Inc.,” SIARELCO noted in a separate announcement.
