DOE failure

Pity Energy Secretary Sharon Garin. She is from Iloilo and like the rest of Visayas, Iloilo has been suffering from power failures reminiscent of the great blackouts of the Cory era. And Secretary Garin seems unable to offer hope.

The best response from Sec. Garin was a statement that the situation was unacceptable. Of course it is. And she is somehow responsible for letting it get this bad.

It isn’t as if this situation happened overnight. The problem had been there for a number of years now even when she was energy undersecretary. And the energy department, past and present, didn’t quite do anything beyond orders meant more for press releases.

I remember talking to then Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Trenas a couple of years ago at City Hall and he was complaining about the power supply situation. He said that they have convinced BPOs to move to Iloilo City and they need 24/7 stable power connection. Now they depend on diesel generators to keep going.

The problem then as now is supply. I talked to Roel Castro of MORE Power, the Ricky Razon-owned distribution utility for Iloilo City, who hosted a dinner for me after my talk with Mayor Jerry. He told me that Iloilo City’s peak demand is around 135 MW.

Castro attributed the fast increase in power demand to a boom in the BPO sector, new commercial real estate and increased residential appliance consumption.

Indeed, Iloilo City has the feel of a booming local economy and it will be a pity if that’s snuffed out by the failure of an Ilongga at the helm of the DOE to assure its power supply. Her palanggas may start calling her the princess of darkness.

The irony is that the four large coal-fired power plants located in the province of Iloilo are, on paper, supposed to produce 454.4 MW. That should be more than enough to cover Iloilo City’s 135 MW demand.

These Panay-based coal-fired power plants, specifically PEDC Unit 3 and PCPC, have been experiencing a cascading cycle of severe, uncoordinated outages and deratings for over two and a half years, culminating in the ongoing September 2026 crisis.

The wake-up call for DOE happened on Jan. 2, 2024. An internal boiler and equipment failure at PEDC Unit 1 triggered a cascading grid collapse. Within hours, PEDC Unit 2 and PCPC tripped simultaneously while PEDC Unit 3 was already down for maintenance. The entire island of Panay (including Boracay during peak tourism season) was plunged into total darkness for four straight days.

In February 2024, PCPC suddenly had to slash its generation from 124 MW to 65 MW due to internal mechanical defects. PEDC Unit 1 simultaneously underwent an extended emergency 17-day maintenance shutdown.

I remember asking Castro if they can just put up solar power units with batteries to isolate Iloilo City from the instability of the coal plants. He said MORE Power, a DU, is prohibited by EPIRA from doing that.

But that is the obvious solution to protect the increasing business activities in Iloilo City. A new dedicated solar power system with batteries to supply the needs of an Iloilo City microgrid set-up is the fastest solution. And the capex involved should be peanuts for Ricky Razon.

Curiously, Sec. Garin has ordered NGCP to sign up some 253 MW of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) across Cebu, Panay, Negros and Leyte for ancillary backup. But how does that help?

Whatever battery systems immediately available are part of the Visayas Grid and already being utilized to address the supply insufficiency. Is this order only for a press release to give the impression they are doing something?

Are those BESS facilities in DOE’s recommended list already existing or still in the planning stage?

DOE and ERC keep on threatening to sanction the power plants that go on unscheduled shutdowns. Suspend their license to operate? How will that help? Sanctions won’t add a single watt to the grid.

Since the problems aren’t new, DOE should have ordered the owners of the perennially offline plants to have a standby power barge to compensate for their deficiencies.

Power plant owners should pay for substitute power caused by the constant failure of their plants. Consumers are unfairly penalized not only by the inconvenience of brownouts but also for the extra expenses for alternative power.

There is suspicion that the Iloilo power plant owners are reluctant to provide the capex necessary to make their power plants work reliably.

The power crisis in the South once again shows we are not ready for a free market as envisioned by EPIRA for so long as supply is very limited. ERC is now intervening yet again because the spot market surged to record highs of nearly P20 per kilowatt-hour.

Mindanao posted the highest WESM rate, surging by 88.2 percent to P19.56 per kWh in August from P10.39 per kWh in July as power supply fell by 7.3 percent to 3,045 megawatts while demand rose by five percent to 2,195 MW.

Spot prices in the Visayas also climbed to a record P18.59 per kWh in August, up by 64.9 percent from P11.29 per kWh in the prior month. Demand inched up by 0.7 percent to 2,094 MW, while supply declined by 2.6 percent to 2,201 MW.

In contrast, Luzon’s WESM rate declined by 34.2 percent to P4.80 per kWh in August from P7.30 per kWh in July, as the supply margin widened. Supply slid by 3.7 percent to 14,493 MW, while demand fell by 10.4 percent to 9,650 MW.

Since the start of the year, the Visayas has recorded 98 yellow and 35 red alerts, while Mindanao has logged 14 yellow and five red alerts. What has DOE done?

A CPA-lawyer may not be the best fit for Energy Secretary. We may need an independent probe body of private engineers looking into the real reasons behind this unsolvable Panay power problem.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco