MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) has upgraded 51 distribution transformers, replaced 51 broken electric poles and fixed 97 hotspot connectors in Iloilo City in two months as part of a total upgrading program of the city’s aged and dilapidated electricity distribution system.
MORE is spending P1.8 billion to rehabilitate and upgrade the city’s power distribution system in the next three years as part of its program to improve electricity supply and improve its capacity to handle bigger demand in the coming years. The program will lead to lower monthly bills as it will cut down systems losses which reached 9.03 percent in 2019.
Roel Castro, MORE president and chief operating officer, said at least 20,000 illegal connections in Iloilo City remain untraced while around 9,000 hotspot connectors need to be upgraded or replaced.
“If we will not do anything to fix these substations … one day one of these substations will fail and may cause a bigger problem (than the power supply outage applied during maintenance works),” Castro said.
MORE Power has replaced all the switchboards and transformers in all the five substations, almost 400 distribution transformers, thousands of poles and 15,000 electric meters in all the residences and business establishments in place of the old ones.
The company is also set to put up two new substations and a mobile substation to meet the projected increase in electricity consumption as the city’s economy grows in the coming years.
