BAGUIO CITY – The Benguet electric Cooperative (BENECO) signified its interest to help the local government in upgrading and repairing the hundreds of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras that the cooperative previously donated to the different barangays and police stations in the city.
The offer to upgrade and repair the damaged CCTV cameras will be in addition to BENECO’s previous proposal to the local government that the rural electric cooperative will be the one to maintain and operate its nearly 9,000 unmetered streetlights and replace the high pressure sodium fixtures to Light Emitting Diode (LED) fixtures.
Earlier, the liga ng mga Barangays expressed its all-out support to the proposal of BENECO to takeover the maintenance and operation of the city’s unmetered streetlights and replace the high pressure sodium fixtures to LED fixtures and requested that the rural electric cooperative upgrade and repair the CCTV cameras that it previously donated to the barangays and police stations in the city over the past several years.
Based on BENECO’s proposal, the electric cooperative will replace all unmetered high pressure sodium streetlight fixtures with Light Emitting Diode (LED) fixtures at no cost to the city government and that it will shoulder the required investment cost for the eventual conversion of the city’s streetlights to LED fixtures.
Further, BENECO will be responsible for the repairs and maintenance of the fixtures for a period of 10 years and it shall bill the city government based on the high pressure sodium streetlight consumption at 12 burning hours.
The electric cooperative committed it will reduce the city’s power bill on the unmetered streetlights by 40 percent, equivalent to about P20 million annually starting on the 6th year up to the 10th year of maintenance and operation.
BENECO stated that based on its computations using actual January to June 2019 rates, the 10-year discount was projected to be around P100 million and that the amount of the actual discount, however, will depend on the prevailing electricity rate.
The average monthly energy consumption of the high pressure sodium fixtures is projected to be around 538,462 kilowatt-hours with an equivalent billing of P4,061,544 using the average rate during the first semester of the year.
In light of the passage of the Murang Koryente Act, BENECO stipulated there is a possibility the discount will be reduced due to the non-payment of stranded debt and stranded contract cost.
BENECO will only replace the existing unmetered high pressure sodium fixtures with LED fixtures while new streetlight installations shall be covered by a separate proposal and memorandum of agreement.
In February this year, BENECO formally turned over to the local government the management and operation of the city’s streetlights after incurring substantial losses that significantly affected its operations over the past six years that it was in charge of maintaining and operating the high pressure sodium fixtures
By HENT
