Coordinated maintenance and upgrade activities by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) and the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) led to widespread but scheduled power interruptions across Baguio City, Benguet, Mountain Province, and parts of Ilocos Sur in mid-January.

According to advisories and reports from each entity’s official facebook pages, the outages were due to electrical testing and maintenance at the La Trinidad Substation, line works along the La Trinidad–Sagada 69-kilovolt transmission line, and the energization of transformers for the Hedcor Ampohaw metering facility. Some areas experienced interruptions lasting up to 12 hours.

Affected locations included the municipalities of Sablan, Kapangan, Atok, Kabayan, Buguias, Mankayan, and portions of La Trinidad, Tublay, Bokod, Kibungan, Bakun, Cervantes, and Quirino. NGCP said the specific areas impacted were determined by the concerned electric cooperatives.

BENECO said it aligned its own preventive maintenance, right-of-way clearing, substation corrections, and distribution line works with NGCP’s transmission schedule to maximize the outage window and avoid repeated service interruptions. These activities covered multiple feeders supplying large sections of Baguio City and Benguet.

The maintenance activities coincided with the commercial loading of BENECO’s newly installed 50-megavolt-ampere (MVA) power transformer at the Lamut–Beckel, La Trinidad Substation. The PHP 50-million transformer augments the existing 20-MVA unit and raises BENECO’s total system capacity to 225 MVA.

BENECO said the added capacity improves system flexibility by allowing load transfers between nearby substations such as Irisan, North Sanitary Camp, and Lamut during outages or maintenance, helping reduce the number of consumers affected by power interruptions.

The January outages also form part of BENECO’s broader PHP 136-million upgrade program for 2026, which includes the installation of insulated tree wires along backbone lines in forested areas, the conversion of 13.2-kV lines to 23-kV systems in northern Benguet, and the rollout of automated metering infrastructure or smart meters.

The cooperative said these projects aim to address rising electricity demand, reduce outage risks caused by vegetation and weather, and improve service reliability across its franchise area, which serves more than 240,000 consumers.

BENECO officials acknowledged that some projects require temporary sacrifices such as scheduled power interruptions but said the upgrades are intended to deliver a more reliable and resilient power system in the long term.

How can better coordination between transmission operators and electric cooperatives help reduce the impact of necessary maintenance work on consumers?

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