SUMMER in the Philippines has always been tinged with the twin issues of power service interruptions and receding water levels in major dams.
This year will be no exception. On Wednesday, May, 13, the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) reported that more than 200,000 of its customers in Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Metro Manila and Rizal experienced brownouts lasting an average of three hours, as at least three power plants in the Luzon grid shut down.
The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) had to declare two yellow alerts and one red alert during the day.
Outages also plagued the Visayas grid, reducing its load to only 2,413 megawatts (MW), not enough to cover the projected peak demand of 2,541 MW.
Brownouts have come to be accepted by many Filipinos as one of the inconveniences to endure when the long, dry season rolls in. And every year, the government offers the same reason why the inconvenience persists.
The NGCP has long identified the problem plants that have been suffering from forced outages. Seventeen of the grid’s 140 or so plants have been on forced outage since March. Three have been offline since 2025, two have been off the grid since 2024, and one has been idle since 2019.
Fourteen plants are running on reduced capacities.
These plants have denied the grid a total of 4,242 megawatts — enough electricity to power the Luzon and Visayas grids combined, or 3.5 million homes.
There are concerns that this year’s power problem could be the most severe ever, as the country continues to reel from the global oil shock.
Most of the country’s power plants run on coal and liquefied natural gas. The war in the Middle East has inflated the price of these petroleum products.
Surging diesel prices, meanwhile, have pushed up the cost of transporting coal to power plants.
Prices in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, which spurted by 30.6 percent in April to P5.63 per kilowatt-hour, compounded the problem.
Breaking the cycle of power outages requires a determined effort to modernize Luzon’s aging plants. It will not be cheap; upgrading the grid is estimated to cost between P56 billion and P22 billion.
The government already has a road map that combines public-private sector partnerships, reinforcing the grid’s infrastructure, infusing foreign assistance and introducing nuclear energy as a new power source.
Activating the plan becomes more urgent as power costs continue to skyrocket and the grid expands to service more and bigger communities.
A stable, uninterrupted supply of electricity is just one-half of the wish list for many Metro Manilans. Having a steady source of water is the other half.
The metropolis gets its water from four sources: the interconnected Angat, Ipo and La Mesa dams, and the new Upper Wawa Dam.
The dams supply Metro Manila with 4,100 to 4,400 million liters daily. For most of the year, the dams hold enough water to ensure a steady, uninterrupted supply. During the rainy seasons, dams even have to open its floodgates to keep the water from spilling over.
But over time, a dam’s storage efficiency degrades. A buildup of sediment hinders water flow, while evaporation reduces the volume of stored water.
During summer, rainless days and intense heat combine to dissipate the water collected during the wet season, and the dam’s level begins to drop.
Early this week, the level at Angat fell 21 centimeters below the minimum operating level of 180 meters. It is expected to drop further.
The cycle begins.
There are ways for the country to improve its water storage without building more expensive and disruptive reservoirs. One is through decentralized rainwater harvesting.
Under Republic Act 6716, or the Rainwater Collector Law, each barangay must build rainwater collectors that will serve as local water sources. The same law requires new commercial and institutional buildings to have built-in water storage tanks for flushing and cooling.
Nature-based solutions, meanwhile, promote the reforesting of watersheds to allow water to naturally seep into the ground.
Water concessionaires can also take the lead by investing in smart sensors to seek out leaks and prevent pipe pressure buildup.
The options are already available. What is needed is the initiative to make things happen.
