Permanent power restoration may already be in the horizon for Bohol and the rest of the Visayas areas which were blanketed by darkness after a 6.5-quake jolted and damaged power plants in Leyte Thursday last week.

Former press secretary and now Energy Development Corporation vice president for communications Ricky Carandang on Monday told the Chronicle that about 70 percent of the power provided by the EDC before the quake hit Leyte will be restored by next week.

“A total of 315-320 MW by next week” will again be directed to the grid, said Carandang in a text message to the Chronicle. “When the outage occurred we were providing 460MW.”

According to Carandang, damaged marshalling stations are expected to be repaired within the day.

“We should have about 40-MW restored to the grid today or tomorrow. Around 120MW to the grid by end of this week,” he said.

However, it would depend on the National Grid Corp.’s (NGCP) progress in restoring their transmission systems whether the generated power would reach Bohol.

Although no major damages on transmission lines were initially detected, NGCP personnel have yet to fully determine whether all systems will function accordingly once these are energized.

The NGCP on Monday also continued to struggle to start the operation of a bypass line that could transmit power from Cebu to Bohol.

In one of its updates, the NGCP said that it has resumed testing at its Ormoc substation after operations were halted twice in two days starting Sunday.

The EDC owns the power plants in Leyte which supplied power to several Visayas provinces including Bohol while the NGCP assumed control of the national transmission system in 2009.

EDC’s Tongonan Geothermal Power Plant in Kananga, Leyte is Bohol’s primary source of power.