Baronda seeks review of EPIRA, NGCP and genco franchises

MANILA — Iloilo City Rep. Julienne “JamJam” Baronda has called for a review of the 25-year-old Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) and the franchises of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) and generation companies (gencos) amid continuing power supply problems in the Visayas.

Baronda made the call during a joint hearing of the House Committee on Energy, the Committee on Visayas Development, and the Committee on Legislative Franchises on Monday, Sept. 21.

The lawmaker cited the repeated yellow and red alerts issued by the NGCP, which indicate insufficient operating margins and insufficient supply, respectively.

“Our people have endured repeated brownouts during periods of yellow and red alerts. These are not merely inconveniences. Every interruption affects businesses, hospitals, schools, industries, and ordinary families. It threatens our economic growth and our ability to attract investments,” Baronda said.

She said distribution utilities should “not be left helpless” when electricity reliability depends on resources over which they have little or no meaningful control.

“I think it is about time for us to revisit two decades of EPIRA law. At the same time, we also need to revisit and to review the franchise of NGCP, alongside some other gencos,” she said.

EPIRA, or Republic Act No. 9136, was enacted in 2001 and established a framework for restructuring the electric power industry, including the separation of generation, transmission, distribution, and supply functions.

NGCP operates, manages, and maintains the country’s high-voltage transmission system under a 50-year congressional franchise granted through Republic Act No. 9511 in 2008.

Baronda said the House of Representatives has passed 14 resolutions since April 2023 seeking to address reliability problems in the Visayas.

She cited several major power incidents, including the widespread Visayas grid disturbance in April 2023, the Panay-Negros power collapse in January 2024, and a Panay substation and transmission trip in March 2024.

She also cited a Panay grid voltage instability incident in early 2025 and intermittent grid outages in Western Visayas that have persisted for four months since late May this year.

The January 2024 incident followed a similar Panay power disturbance in April 2023.

The Department of Energy (DOE) later said the January event involved the simultaneous tripping of power plants that isolated Panay from the rest of the Visayas grid.

“Electricity is not merely a commodity; it is the foundation of economic development. Our people deserve a power system that is reliable and capable of supporting the future we are building for them,” Baronda said.

Baronda also questioned the prolonged outages of several generating plants.

She said power plants typically undergo about 45 days of scheduled maintenance annually, but some plants in the Visayas have remained offline for more than four months.

“How did this happen? Four plants went offline at the same time. Didn’t you have a contingency plan? What happened? Is this a failure of maintenance protocols or gross incompetence?” Baronda asked.

DOE Undersecretary Mario Marasigan did not directly respond to Baronda’s question but said the agency has been monitoring generating facilities.

“We have been closely monitoring these power facilities, particularly those that are on outage. We also inspect those that are not on outage,” Marasigan said.

He said the DOE is tracking when the plants are expected to return to service.

“What we are keen on observing is the actual date of their restoration to service. However, there are circumstances beyond our control that result in extended outages of their facilities. What happened was that we really experienced extended outages,” Marasigan said.

The DOE has existing programs for performance assessment and audits of power generation facilities, including inspections and technical assessments of facilities experiencing forced or prolonged maintenance outages.

The department is also exploring collaboration with the Philippine Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Integrated Electrical Engineers of the Philippines Inc., and the Board of Electrical Engineering for the implementation of the National Power Plant Generation Reliability Assessment and Audit.

The initiative would provide third-party assessments of power plants with recurring outages, deratings, forced shutdowns, or deteriorating performance.

The DOE has also been strengthening its scrutiny of generation companies in 2026, including inspections of facilities with recurring forced outages and reviews of compliance with maintenance schedules.

NGCP has attributed recent supply shortfalls in the Visayas to the shutdown of Units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc. and Unit 3 of Panay Energy Development Corp.

Plant outages and deratings kept 962.9 megawatts unavailable to the Visayas grid as of Sept. 15, and the DOE has said the large units on forced outage are scheduled to return in September and October.