Advantages of Frequent Brownout in Oriental Mindoro

Brownout or power interruption doesn’t bring all-negative effects only. They brought positive effects as well as explained in this part of Effects of Brownout or Power Interruption in Oriental Mindoro.

 

Brownouts have brought us varying experiences as to their results and effects. I’m not sure what consequences had been brought to you with the regular and too frequent brownout incidents here in Oriental Mindoro or in your own place. But I have to share mine. Please note how it differs from yours. Never mind the solutions yet, you will have them in my other posts. 

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Here are the effects of frequent brownouts. I’ll start with the advantages and tackle the disadvantages prior to conclusion.

This sounds really crazy. But in fairness, brownouts had brought positive effects on my family. And they serve as well as  best practices in wise use of electricity. I’m serious.

• It disciplines us to take early dinner. This means lesser electricity consumption from preparation to digestion in the mouth since it was done on daylight. Electricity use begins only in washing dishes at nightfall.

•  It disciplines us to sleep early. At lights on, kids are still awake with me or my wife at 10:00 to 11:00 PM. The body requires 8 hours of sleep to be healthy. And to be able to heal itself, it must be asleep between 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM. But with regular brownout, we’re disciplined to be in bed as early as 8:00 PM with power interruption or not.

• It disciplined us from late-night internet use. With the internet on, I’m usually awake until 12:00 midnight social networking, doing research, surfing and blogging. But the discipline that frequent brownout brought to my family gave me patience to wait until dawn to use the internet.

• It drives us to prepare to buy an alternative source of energy. Though brownout brings some benefits. Its disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. So we decided to save to buy green energy generating equipment for alternative source of electricity. I would post article/s on Green Energy someday soon.

• It motivates us to plan for the future shelter. We are grateful that we’re just renting a house. By the time we build one for our own, we’ll make it Eco-friendly House. Aside from being cheaper by more than 50%, it requires only a little amount of energy. Again, I felt obliged to share information in Eco-friendly structures since they have many benefits to the occupants, the environment and economy. I promise to write on this in the soonest future.

You’ve just seen and proved that I was not kidding that brownout or power interruption has positive effects or results. It made my family disciplined and healthy! I should thank the Oriental Mindoro Electric Cooperative (ORMECO) for that.

But I’m not saying that I love frequent brownout. I’m not commending ORMECO for that since it's a reflection of incompetence and a form of unreliability of service that they offer. 

We’ll examine the negative effects or Disadvantages of Frequent Brownout in Oriental Mindoro in my next post.

Reasons of Frequent Brownout in Oriental Mindoro

“No more brownout tonight, we had enough power interruptions today.” That’s the common remarks of some electric consumers in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro.

Many had asked, “why such frequent brownout?” Oh yea, who wouldn’t get irritated with 2-3 or more times power interruptions in a day. It destroyed the CPU of my desktop computer at home; it broke down my computer’s UPS at the office which left me two days with no computer working on my paper works. Our air conditioning unit (ACU) in the office had been repaired several times due to voltage upsurges and fluctuations. 

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If you listen to the people around, you’d hear similar endless complaints. But, wait a minute. Before we cast all the blame to Oriental Mindoro Electric Cooperative (ORMECO), for all the bad consequences of power interruptions in the province, let’s find out their reasons why. 

Here is the report of their reasons for the frequent brownout in Oriental Mindoro. It was published in the 2013 first issue of Tanglaw, ORMECO official publication. 

On page 4, it was written that the electricity supply shortfall was due to the following reasons: 

1. Diminishing water flow that runs the two mini-hydroelectric power plants. Consumers should understand that it would take certain amount of water for the turbines to rotate. 

2. The Global Power Holdings (GPH) engine broke down. Perhaps (not so sure) one of their power providers that produces electric power using diesel-operated electric generators. 

3. Conduct of preventive maintenance of some electric power plants. 

4. Increasing demand of electricity supply due to hot weather during summer. 

They said that the Rotational Brownout might last until June. The paper explained that other provinces are experiencing the same problems of power interruptions that even last up to 8 hours specially those in Mindanao. 

Read Tagalog version here: Mga Kadahilanan ng Palagiang Brownout sa Oriental Mindoro