A scheduled 13-hour province-wide power blackout on Saturday stretched into 21 hours affecting thousands of Boholanos who went to bed irked by the unexpected severe delay in the resumption of power.

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) kept on revising their power resumption advisory starting at 4PM yesterday after stability tests in the Ormoc-Maasin 138 kilovolt (KV) lines continued beyond the scheduled 4PM return to normal power.

According to the NGCP advisory, Bohol substations started energizing minutes before midnight with power restored at 12:37 in Tagbilaran City.

With a 5:30 sunset on Saturday coupled with intermittent heavy rains, Boholanos were deeply agitated when the 4:00PM scheduled return of power was moved to 6:30PM, then reset at 8:00PM and finally at 12:00 midnight.  

Bohol source its power from power plants located in Cebu and Leyte with the bulk coming from the geothermal power plants in Leyte and transmitted to Bohol through a 17-kilometer submarine cable from Guadalupe, Southern Leyte to Tugas, Ubay.

The 21-hour power outage brought to the fore the need for a base load power plant in Bohol to stave off another power crisis similar to the month-long power interruption in November 2013 due to Typhoon Yolanda that crippled our main source of power in Leyte.