MANILA - Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla has blamed the country's power grid operator for the massive blackout gripping Panay Island.

Lotilla said the power outage could have been prevented if the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines had finished its interconnection project on time.

"To me, the main accountability is with them because it is NGCP that is tasked with maintaining the stability of the grid," Lotilla said in an interview with ANC.

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He noted that the NGCP said it would finish the Panay-Negros-Cebu Interconnection Project in August 2023.

"And they were not! We are now in January and they promised this in August," Lotilla said.

Panay is the sixth-largest and fourth-most populous island in the Philippines and has the provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, and Iloilo. Large parts of the island were left without power on Tuesday after several power plants tripped.

Lotilla however said the grid would not have "collapsed" if the NGCP had intervened on time.

He said that according to the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP), NGCP failed to do this.

"They (IEMOP) pointed out that there was a 2-hour window of opportunity for the NGCP as systems operator to come in and prevent the system from collapsing, but there was no manual load dropping that was resorted to by NGCP during that 2-hour period."

He explained that the NGCP could have called on electric cooperatives in Panay to reduce their load to prevent the entire system from collapsing.

Bringing back the generators online would take at least 3 days after a collapse, he said.

Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas estimated that the city has already lost over P1 billion due to the blackout.

"Based on rough estimates of the LEDIP (Local Economic Development and Investment Promotion) the city of Iloilo is losing between P400 million to P500 million a day due to the power interruptions and rotational brownout. In three days, we would have lost P1.5 billion," Treñas said.

Lawmakers have already called for a probe into the Panay blackout.

The NGCP said it expects power to be completely restored in Panay by Friday. But the company also said this will still depend on whether power plants can deliver enough supply.

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