MANILA, Philippines – With the business climate dimmed by renewed insurgency-related violence, Mindanao’s on-and-off economic boom suffered another dampener this week as rotating brownouts worsened due to a severe drop in the island’s electricity supply.

According to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, which runs the power distribution network in the entire country, electricity supply in Mindanao was short by 81 megawatts of electricity as of Friday, forcing several areas in southern Philippines to go dark intermittently as the national government struggled to control a renewed flare-up of violence in Basilan province, where 19 soldiers from the elite Army Scout Rangers were killed last Wednesday in a clash with rebels from the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The NGCP said it put Mindanao “on red alert” effective 11 a.m. last Wednesday “due to zero contingency reserve brought about by planned outage and reduced capability of power plants.”

According to the NGCP, it lost 105 megawatts of electricity supply because of the shutdown of one of the two generating plants of Steag State Power, Inc. in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental for scheduled maintenance repairs.

The state-owned National Power Corp. has also “derated” or reduced the generating capacity of its ageing hydro-electric and diesel power plants in various parts of Mindanao to prevent further degradation of its facilities, it added.

The NGCP said the NPC has downgraded the capacity of its Agus 1 hydroelectric power plant to 35 MW from its original 80 MW, Agus 2 to 80 MW from 180 MW, Agus 4 to 100 MW from 158 MW, Agus 5 to 30 MW from 55 MW, Agus 6 to 130 MW from 200 MW, Agus 7 to 25 MW from 54 MW, Pulangi 4 to 200 MW from 255 MW, and the Zamboanga City-based Western Mindanao Power Corp. diesel plants to 90 MW from 100 MW.

The Department of Energy had previously warned of a severe electricity supply situation in Mindanao starting next year when the summer season starts and drains water reserves in Mindanao’s hydro-electric power plant facilities.

Several private companies have started new power plant projects to offset the expected power supply shortage, among them Aboitiz Power Corporation which is proposing a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Davao and the Alcantara Group which is building a 200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Sarangani province and a 100-megawatt power plant in San Ramon district in Zamboanga City.

Mindanao is currently suffering from rotational blackouts. In General Santos City, we sometimes experience 1-12 hours of Blackouts. I have lately thought about these blackouts and what would be its effects in our community, not only in Gensan but in the whole Mindanao area. The number one impact of these blackouts would be in business, it may have some positive and negative effects. Malls will have a great share on these blackouts. People seek comfort. They want a cold place to hang out.

Small businesses like computer shops can’t earn during blackouts they have no big generators to supply energy for the computers. We are greatley affected by this situation because we have a Business in Gensan, our poultry farm is in danger of blackouts in just 5 mins a whole population of 100000 chickens will die if the machineries dont work. Powering a generator requires diesel to power it. It is an additional cost in our part. We are trying to maximized profit and we are greatly affected by this problem. They must immediately solve this problem. A lot of Big time or small time businesses are in danger of this problem, this might affect us drastically in the economy. Businesses are one of the sources of the governments tax income if one Big time business gets hit it will drastically decrease the tax income and there will be a shorter budget for the people benefiting from these taxes.