Blackouts, ballooning bills hammer Filipinos as energy crisis grips Philippines

Meralco, the country’s top electricity distributor, announced another price increase last week – citing rising generation costs – only to make a U-turn over the weekend after the government ordered it to stagger the increases over several months starting from July.

The impact on consumers has been significant, as Meralco serves roughly one out of every five Filipinos.

Government officials and analysts point to a confluence of factors for what Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla has called “a calamity”.

Pagasa, the government weather agency, recorded an “anomaly” increase in temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in April, compared to the 1991-2020 average, an Energy Department official said at the same briefing.

The intense heat forced 19 ageing power plants in the country’s industrial heartland of Luzon to shut down or be taken offline to prevent overheating, grid operator NGCP reported on April 16. The plants can currently only withstand ambient temperatures of up to 33 degrees, but Lotilla said efforts were under way to raise that limit.

To address the energy crisis, he said the government took steps such as relying on more expensive bunker fuel plants, requiring large companies to use their own generators, and instituting a four-day work week in the public sector with temperature limits on air conditioning.

Up to 4.03 gigawatts of additional capacity could be added this year in a bid to resolve the crisis, officials promised at the briefing.

Energy Undersecretary Rowena Guevara said at the time that the number of energy projects coming online this year would be “greater than the expected economic growth of the country”

The energy department projects capacity rising from 122,056 gigawatt-hours this year to