The country’s power system may have suffered drawbacks last year because of the pandemic, but Hedcor Inc, the hydropower subsidiary of Aboitiz Power Corporation, had beaten the odds and it instead log improvements on its overall operations.

In a statement to the media, the Aboitiz firm reported that it posted annual generation of 956,514, 413 kilowatt hours or about 956 gigawatt hours (GWh) last year.

That scale of generation, according to the company, was able to provide electricity service to more than 400,000 households around the country – at a time that power supply became even more critical commodity because of the work-from-home arrangements and the online learning of the students.

Hedcor stated that it also registered last year its lowest weighted unplanned outage factor (WUOF) at 0.73-percent, which has been deemed its “best record” in the past five years.

The company reckoned that such milestone “emphasizes the steady improvement of Hedcor’s plant reliability as it recorded the lowest number of unexpected shutdowns of its hydropower units in recent memory.”

As noted by Rey Rafael, assistant vice president for operations in Luzon, the company had to work with leaner human resources last year because of the quarantine protocols, yet he qualified “we were able to work around the limitations through proper communication, maximization of digital platforms and simplification of processes.”

The strategy applied, according to the company, had been to divide its employees’ deployment, “placing teams on alternating 14-day facility quarantine, as a precautionary measure to avoid possible exposure to coronavirus.”

As it reaped success with that operations and maintenance (O&M) scheme, the company asserted that “beyond continuously meeting the energy needs of the community, the pandemic has not stopped Hedcor from innovating and meeting global standards.”

Part of the achievements gained by the hydropower firm last year had been the re-certification of its Luzon Hydro Corporation in Ilocos and its Davao-based plants Sibulan and Tudaya for ISO 22301:2012 Business Continuity Management System.

Similarly, the company and its Hedcor Sabangan Inc. asset in Mountain Province had been recertified for ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management System; ISO 9001:2018 Quality Management System; and ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System.