Electricity hike unavoidable

By Herbert Vego

THE next time Jona or Judith comes to visit, some housewives will not be in the mood to part with their husbands’ hard-earned money.

Levity aside, “due date” or “due na” scares Mama whenever the family budget could not cope with the escalating use of electricity and its corresponding price hike.

The amount stated in the electricity bill is the sum total of charges imposed by the power generators, the national grid and the distribution utilities (DUs), among others.

For the well-to-do, that’s not as bad a problem as “yellow” and “red” which may deprive them of their comfort zone. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) imposes a “yellow alert” to indicate that while supply is still enough to meet current demand, it has fallen below the required safety margin.

Red alert is declared when the reserved electricity supply is depleted, hence insufficient to meet customers’ demand.

In both exigencies, the NGCP alerts the distribution utilities (DUs) – such as MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) in Iloilo City and Iloilo Electric Cooperative (ILECO) in the province — to rotate brownouts in various areas.

Recurring power interruptions in Iloilo City this month of June are unusually frequent. From June 2 to June 19, 2026, Iloilo City recorded at least seven publicly posted MORE Power advisories for manual load dropping (MLD) as directed by the NGCP.

Manual load dropping refers to a planned, temporary power interruption to prevent a total grid collapse.

Power outages are undesirable because they prevent us from engaging in our routinary functions. Imagine the difficulty of an asthmatic patient to breathe, for example, when he cannot inhale medicine from a nebulizer that depends on electricity to run. He can die from that depravity.

“It’s already scorching hot, but there might be power cuts on top of that,” people who can’t turn on electric fans and air-conditioners complain.

For the poor families who barely survive on minimum wage, it could mean getting “disconnected” for lack of money to pay the power bills.

It seems unfair, on the other hand, that those who pay their electric bills on time may suffer a similar predicament.

But of course, the DUs lose, too, because they earn much less whenever rampant power outages strike. It’s not their fault; the problem hinges from the law of supply and demand.

When the quantity of any commodity which is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, prices naturally rise. The upward adjustment is traceable to higher generation prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).

The DUs do not generate power. They purchase it from various power plants, from where electricity flows through the main lines of the (NGCP), onward to those of the DUs, ending up in the homes and establishments of the consumers.

We have heard customers say that artificial power shortages could be manipulated. But the usual reason given  “breakdown” of the generating unit, necessitating emergency overhaul.

These plants may swear that due to the abnormal demand for electricity during hot weather, they can only generate so much without conking out.

If it’s any consolation, we may now avail ourselves of solar lights and electric fans during brownouts.

About its bills coming out this month of June in Iloilo City, MORE Power is charging an added ₱2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), from ₱11.87 per kWh to ₱13.87 per kWh.

To ease the burden of the marginalized power consumers, according to the firm’s information officer, Angel Tan, there will be no disconnection or service interruption for unpaid bills between May and July, provided that each month’s consumption does not exceed 200 kilowatt-hours, and provided that the consumer executes a promissory note to defer payment for whatever reason.