NO DARK HOLIDAYS?: DOE says Visayas brownouts could end in October

By Rjay Zuriaga Castor

ILOILO CITY – Residents of the Visayas may have to endure rotational brownouts until early October as the Department of Energy (DOE) presses the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) to complete the connection of battery energy storage systems to the grid.

DOE Secretary Sharon Garin said the department has been pushing NGCP for nearly three months to expedite the energization of battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities deployed across the Visayas.

“We have been trying to do this for three months already. We have been pushing NGCP to connect the batteries that, based on our simulations, should be deployed in the Visayas to reduce the alerts,” Garin said in an interview with DZMM Teleradyo on Friday, Sept. 4.

“We are waiting. Their commitment, I believe, is that they will be able to complete it within the month. Unfortunately, it is taking them time to act on it,” she added.

NGCP is the privately led concessionaire that operates and maintains the country’s transmission backbone, including the interconnection of new generation and storage assets to the grid.

In a June 2026 press release, the DOE said it was advancing short- and medium-term measures that could add about 260 megawatts (MW) of capacity to the Visayas Grid.

These include the deployment of about 170 MW of BESS strategically located across Cebu, Negros, and Panay to provide both energy and ancillary services.

The measures also cover the installation of a 20-MW modular diesel generating set.

A third option is the possible transfer of a power barge from Metro Manila to Panay Island.

If these immediate interventions are realized, Garin said the Visayas power situation is likely to improve by October.

“Our target is to end this or at least reduce the alerts to a minimum. I am hoping that within this month or by early next month, the Visayas power system will significantly improve,” she said.

“Hopefully, if NGCP is able to do what it needs to do, at least the red alerts will be gone and the yellow alerts will be reduced. It is probably safe to say October, early October, because they said they would finish within the month. So let us give them a grace period,” she added.

A yellow alert is raised when operating reserves fall below the required level, while a red alert signals that supply is insufficient to cover demand, which typically triggers manual load dropping by distribution utilities.

Garin said the DOE had originally planned to address the problem as early as June, but some of the necessary work by NGCP remained unfinished.

A system-wide problem

Garin said the persistent rotational brownouts should not be blamed solely on electric cooperatives or distribution utilities, as they can only distribute the power available to them.

“It is the whole system. If you look at it, there is a problem in generation and a problem in transmission. The problem is complicated because this is not something that just happened now. It is a problem that we should have addressed 10 years ago,” she said.

Garin said distribution utilities are not primarily responsible for the current situation because “they receive what they can receive.”

“They are trying. Some of them are looking for ways to address it, but I think distribution is the least guilty in this case,” she said.

The DOE secretary said the department is strictly monitoring the plants of generation companies that are on forced or unplanned outages.

“We check when they are expected to return so they know that we are following up and that restoring their capacity is urgent,” she added.

Major islands need their own power plants

Garin said one of the long-term solutions to the growing electricity demand in the Visayas is the construction of new power plants.

She said additional plants are expected to be built in the Visayas by 2028, although construction could take three to five years.

“When you build a power plant, it takes about five years. That is why we should have added plants to the Visayas much earlier,” she said.

“The ideal plan we have come up with for the Visayas is for each major island to have a reliable power plant,” Garin added.

She said the DOE has assessed the major islands, including Mindoro, Panay, Cebu, Negros, Bohol, Leyte, and Samar, to determine their power requirements.

“I think Leyte and Samar would be sufficient because they have relatively low baseload requirements, and their demand is also low. But for all the rest, they really lack at least around 100 MW of power — and that we need to put up, so that they won’t have to import or export power,” she said.

“They need to be self-sufficient, so we are already looking for investors who can put up power plants. In Cebu, there are already plants, and in Panay, there are also plants. We are still looking at other areas because sometimes the local government units do not want fossil-based plants,” she added.

Garin said areas that do not want fossil-fuel-based baseload plants could consider other technologies, including solar-plus-battery systems.

“We are mapping it out, but it takes time. The fastest we can put up a plant is around three years,” she said.

The reliability of the Visayas grid has been a recurring concern on Panay, which experienced an island-wide outage in January 2024 after the near-simultaneous tripping of several generating units.