Energy Secretary Sharon Garin has warned that the Visayas grid may keep facing red alerts until 2028, even if the region gets a short break from alerts this week. Speaking at an energy summit in Cebu on 13 October, she said power barges, battery storage and new plants would reduce the shortages but would not make them disappear.
The Department of Energy expects the grid to stay unstable through the dry months and during the El Niño that forecasters are expecting. The power barges are scheduled to arrive in the first quarter of 2027, and Garin said they would help keep the number of red alerts down. “It won’t be enough to erase all the red alerts,” she told the gathering, while adding that the government could at least contain them.
Alongside the barges, the department is planning roughly 250 megawatts of battery storage spread across Iloilo, Bohol, Leyte and Cebu. Limits on the transmission links that connect Luzon, Leyte and Cebu are adding to the strain on the system. The larger, longer-term fixes are still some way off. A 500-megawatt gas plant in Cebu and a second plant in Panay are not expected to supply electricity until sometime between 2028 and 2030, which leaves the region relying on stopgap measures for at least another year. Until then, the barges and batteries are meant to bridge the gap between demand and the supply the existing plants and lines can deliver.
Business groups say the outages are already costing them money. The Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry told the summit that repeated interruptions are pushing up operating costs for manufacturers, tourism operators and IT and business process outsourcing companies, three sectors that carry much of the province’s economy. The chamber said smaller businesses are being hit hardest by the disruption, since they have fewer resources to ride out repeated outages. Business leaders and consumer representatives used the Cebu gathering to press the government for faster and more concrete solutions.
Until the new capacity comes online, Garin asked households and businesses across the Visayas to cut their electricity use by 10 to 20 per cent to take pressure off the grid. The summit also marked the launch of the Cebu Energy Alliance, a new body set up to coordinate how the province responds to the power crisis in the months ahead. Garin’s message to the summit was that the coming two years will be about managing the shortfall rather than ending it, with a lasting fix tied to the new gas plants.
