AN official of the Department of Energy (DoE) on Saturday assured that the grid system in Panay Island and its neighboring provinces is stable.

Energy Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan said the department has been monitoring the power supply on the island since the January 2 blackout.

"The situation now, as I mentioned earlier, is that our grid system is stable. We have ample supply, there is no shortage, and we monitor the situation every 30 minutes," Marasigan said in Filipino during a weekly forum in Quezon City.

"And there are times when Panay is still exporting to Negros," he added.

He also clarified that no rotational brownout had been experienced on the island other than the blackout on January 2.

He expressed hope that the line enhancement program of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), particularly the Cebu-Negros-Panay (CNP) Stage 3 Project, would be completed soon, which, he added, would prevent outages.

The project, he said, would increase the capacity to transfer power supply to Negros and Panay.

"One of the solutions we found to avoid it is that the enhancement of Negros-Panay should be completed. That's what we call the stage 3 project of CNP [Cebu-Negros-Panay]. That's the part where we will increase the transfer capacity of Negros and Panay. Right now, as I mentioned, 180 megawatts can go up to 400 megawatts. So, even if the generation in Panay is significantly reduced, that line will provide electricity," Marasigan said.

The NGCP has committed to finish the project by the end of March, he added.

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