San Carlo’s Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos called for accountability from government regulators and generation companies over recurring power outages in the Visayas, saying consumers should not continue bearing the cost of an electricity system that fails to deliver reliable service.
Speaking during the joint congressional hearing on the Visayas power crisis in Bacolod City on Oct. 3, Alminaza questioned whether power companies and government agencies were being held responsible for outages and failures to deliver contracted commitments, a press release said Sunday.
“Is the DOE as an agency able to make people accountable if they are not able to deliver their commitments?” Alminaza asked during the hearing.
“We demand for transparency, consumer protection, and clean energy for Negros,” he said.
According to the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED), consumers continue to endure expensive and unreliable electricity six months after the declaration of a national energy emergency, despite electricity being an essential public service.
The Visayas grid recorded 160 yellow and red alerts from January to September 2026, with coal plants repeatedly cited as major contributors to the region’s power supply shortages.
Therma Visayas Inc. Unit 1 was cited as a major cause of alerts 117 times, TVI Unit 2 98 times, Panay Energy Development Corp. 80 times and Cebu Energy Development Corp. 13 times.
The unplanned and forced outages of coal plants have contributed significantly to the power shortages that have triggered rotating brownouts and red and yellow alerts across the Visayas since May.
As available supply falls, consumers are also exposed to more expensive electricity purchased from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market, the group said.
According to CEED, average spot-market prices in the Visayas stood at P5.22 per kilowatt-hour before the May 2026 alerts and increased to P11.58 per kilowatt-hour after the alerts began.
The highest recorded WESM settlement rate for coal in the Visayas between May and July reached P45.63 per kilowatt-hour.
Each outage of TVI Unit 1 removed 169 megawatts of capacity from the grid, with another 169 MW lost whenever TVI Unit 2 went offline. Outages involving Panay Energy Development Corp. meant another 150 MW of lost capacity.
Consumers bear the consequences
Alminaza told lawmakers that the unresolved crisis raises a fundamental issue of accountability.
He questioned whether the Department of Energy was capable of imposing consequences when contracted commitments were not fulfilled, while consumers continued to suffer from unreliable electricity.
For households, the consequences of these outages go beyond grid statistics.
Insufficient power means homes without lighting or electric fans, disrupted internet access, and interruptions to schooling. Generation companies responsible for failing coal plants should be held accountable for exposing consumers to avoidable harm, according to CEED.
“The poor should not pay for power they do not receive,” Alminaza said.
The bishop said energy is supposed to be a public service, yet ordinary consumers are the ones left shouldering the burden when the system fails.
CEED also raised concerns over regulations governing power plant outages. According to the independent think tank, the Energy Regulatory Commission expanded the allowable outage period for power plants from 16 days to between 27 and 32 days.
Alminaza pressed the government to explain what consequences companies face when they fail to provide the capacity they committed to deliver.
Former Negros Occidental Gov. Rafael Coscolluela also called during the hearing for the Department of Energy to disclose the status of its investigations into power plants with forced outages, including corrective action plans and sanctions, if any.
He also sought timelines for restoring plants under forced outage and deploying battery energy storage systems.
Coal failures cannot be solved with more coal
The repeated outages underscore the risks of continued dependence on coal as a source of supposedly reliable baseload power.
CEED described coal plants as the primary contributors to recent outages and said expanding coal generation would prolong, rather than resolve, the problems of expensive and unreliable electricity.
The group said AboitizPower and Vivant Corp. are the parent companies behind Therma Visayas Inc. Units 1 and 2, while Meralco is the parent company of Unit 3 of Panay Energy Development Corp.
The independent think tank also raised concerns over Therma Visayas continuing to secure power supply arrangements with distribution utilities and electric cooperatives despite the outages attributed to its facilities.
Alminaza challenged policymakers to reconsider continued reliance on large centralized baseload plants when their outages can contribute to red and yellow alerts across the grid.
He urged the government to look instead toward distributed energy resources and to maximize the renewable energy available in Negros.
The bishop pointed to the Secure Negros roadmap, which calls for a just transition to renewable energy and distributed energy resources while addressing generation, transmission, distribution and utilization.
CEED said distributed renewable energy should be placed at the center of the government’s response to the Visayas power crisis.
Energy is a question of justice
Alminaza urged policymakers to consider three constituencies in every major energy decision: poor communities, the environment and future generations.
He warned that emergency solutions should not solve an immediate shortage by creating longer-term social and environmental problems.
The bishop said the poorest consumers are often the most vulnerable to power interruptions and rising electricity costs, while decisions made today will shape the energy system inherited by generations yet to come.
For CEED, the continuing Visayas power crisis demonstrates the need to move away from a system that allows consumers to bear the consequences of unreliable coal plants while generation companies continue operating without sufficient accountability.
The independent think tank said protecting consumers requires both accountability for existing failures and a faster transition toward distributed, renewable, and resilient energy systems.
“The poor should not pay for power they do not receive. Light is dignity,” the press release said.*
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