Only 10 villages remain without power months after Yolanda devastation - Akelco

 BY BOY RYAN B. ZABAL

Power has been restored in 358 of 368 barangays of the service areas of Aklan Electric Cooperative (Akelco), four months after Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) badly hit the Panay Island.

Engr. Joel Martinez, Akelco assistant general manager for engineering, said the 10 remaining barangays are all from far flung barangays in the town of Libacao in Aklan.

Akelco is serving 17 towns in Aklan and the two towns of Pandan and Libertad in Antique.

Not all households in Akelco’s service areas have access to electricity as of March 11. Of the 113,440 consumers, Akelco has restored power to 112,112 consumers or 98.8 percent were connected to the grid.

Martinez said the Department of Energy (DoE) and the National Electrification Administration (NEA) have imposed deadline for electric cooperatives to energize the remaining barangays by March 31, 2014.

“We might fully restore the power in all barangays affected by Typhoon Yolanda before the deadline,” he said.

At the height of super typhoon Yolanda devastation on November 8 last year, some 6,000 electric posts of Akelco were toppled.

The franchise area of Akelco had to deal also with rotational brownouts and power interruptions since the transmission lines were heavily damaged by typhoon Yolanda.

Due to power shortage, some business establishments, hospitals, banks and households have resorted to emergency power supplies and back-up generators.

It took the NEA’s volunteer service Task Force Kapatid about a month to repair the power lines of Akelco and the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to restore power in some areas in Aklan.