Probe sought on reserve power charges billed to Visayas consumers amid recurring red alerts

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Philstar.com

September 8, 2026 | 8:23am

MANILA, Philippines — A resolution has been filed in Congress calling for an investigation into what Visayas electricity consumers are paying for ancillary services, the reserve power that keeps the grid stable, and whether those reserves were actually delivered during the outages that hit the region this year. 

House Resolution No. 1430 notes that the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) reported a nationwide ancillary services rate increase from Php 0.7941 to Php 1.0391 per kilowatt-hour for the July 2026 billing period, or 30.85%, carried into consumers' August bills. 

Since NGCP sets these charges separately for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the resolution seeks the Visayas-specific rate and its month-by-month movement from January to August 2026, figures consumers have not seen.

Those charges were collected over the same stretch that the Visayas grid went under repeated red alerts, beginning with the first of 2026 on May 13. 

On July 8, 1,092.8 megawatts were unavailable due to forced outages and deratings, triggering manual load dropping in parts of Cebu, Mactan, Aklan, Antique, Bohol, Capiz, Guimaras and Iloilo. 

A further red alert on August 26 saw 938.9 megawatts unavailable. The resolution points out that the 2026 Visayas alerts were driven primarily by generation outages rather than transmission failure.

The inquiry would require NGCP, Energy Regulatory Commission, Department of Energy, Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines, and the concerned generation and ancillary services providers to produce the amounts charged to Visayas consumers; the payments made to each provider; and the megawatts of reserve required, procured, available, scheduled and actually dispatched during the alerts, including whether non-performance charges were applied under the WESM Rules.

It also seeks firm completion dates for generation, energy storage and transmission projects for the Visayas grid, including the Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone reinforcements and battery deployments, along with the cause of any delay, the entity responsible, and the extent and causes of Negros solar curtailment in 2026.

"Every centavo of this charge is passed on to the consumer, so every centavo has to be accounted for. If reserves that were paid for were not delivered, the ERC should determine whether refunds or penalties are due,” Rep. Javier Miguel Benitez (3rd District, Negros Occidental), the resolution’s author, said.

The resolution directs the Committee to recommend measures for transparent charges, verified reserve delivery, and firm project deadlines, and to recommend that the ERC determine whether refunds, cost disallowances, or penalties are warranted. (Contributed story)