Some customers in Cebu may not exactly regain their electricity service by New Year’s day, but their servicing utility Visayan Electric Company (VECO) is striving to achieve 80-percent power supply restoration by January 10 next year.

Aboitiz Power Corporation, which is the parent firm of VECO, announced that the areas hit hardest by typhoon Odette may need until end of January 2022 to have their electricity fully restored.

Based on its assessment, VECO was “optimistic that re-energization will reach 30-percent by New Year’s Eve,” emphasizing that critical areas like hospitals as well as water pumping stations are being prioritized for electricity service restoration efforts.

“This forecast is based on current damage assessments to (VECO’s) network and the number of linemen or crews working on the ground,” Aboitiz Power explained.

The power firm qualified though that “the situation is dynamic and these targets may change as more information is made available and more progress is made.”

The areas being served by VECO cover the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, Talisay, Naga and four municipalities in the greater part of Metro Cebu, including Consolacion, Liloan, Minglanilla and San Fernando.

In extreme weather swings, such as super typhoons, the country’s energy infrastructure facilities are seen most vulnerable. Repairs to damaged infrastructure could redound to days, weeks or months that consumers will have to suffer literal dark days in their homes and communities.

At VECO’s franchise area in Cebu, it was reported that typhoon Odette toppled at least 560 power poles, as culled from the damage assessment carried out by the utility firm.

As of Monday, Dec. 27, VECO specified that it was able to restore roughly 53-percent or 288 of the 544 power line segments – and these facilities have been ranging from 23 kilovolts (kV) to 69kV lines. It also brought back to operations 18 out of the 19 substations hammered by the disaster.

According to Raul Lucero, president and chief operating officer of VECO, “the repair and restoration of electricity supply is made more challenging by various factors that are involved during the power restoration process.”

The company executive primarily narrated that “debris from fallen structures and trees hamper the mobility of our trucks and linemen.”

He further noted that “broken or leaning poles from Visayan Electric are difficult to repair and take many hours to replace,” hence, it will require “many more hours to reconnect lines to these poles and to test that these new lines work.”

Lucero emphasized there are also aggravating factors to the electricity service restoration undertaking, such as the storm-downed trees, poles as well as lines of various infrastructure facilities – and all of these could pose physical hurdles in the repair work of the deployed crew.

At this stage, the VECO executive stated that they are expecting reinforcement from peer-distribution utilities so they can ramp up restoration works.

“Before the year ends, the company expects a total of 182 linemen to augment the 308 Visayan Electric linemen working on the ground,” Lucero said, adding that the complementing crew-contingents are coming from the Manila Electric Company; Cagayan Electric Power & Light Co.; San Fernando Electric; Angeles Electric; Dagupan Electric; Tarlac Electric and Iligan Light.