The council approved the request during its third-quarter full council meeting at Carcar City Hall in Carcar City, about 39.5 kilometers south of here, on Sept. 30, seeking presidential action upon the recommendation of the Department of Energy (DOE).
The proposed declaration is intended to fast-track immediate and short-term measures to ease the shortage, hasten the construction and expansion of power plants, and accelerate priority transmission and substation projects of National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in the Visayas.
Cebu Gov. Pamela Baricuatro, who chairs RDC-7 and presided over the meeting, welcomed the resolution, which was approved through a mass motion. She said Visayas governors had sought the declaration as their provinces grappled with recurring yellow and red alerts.
Visayas bloc
Jennifer Bretaña, Central Visayas regional director of the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev), presented the proposal during the meeting.
She said the RDCs in Western and Eastern Visayas were expected to adopt similar resolutions, noting that Baricuatro also heads the Visayas bloc.
“The entire Visayas bloc would request the President to immediately declare a state of a power emergency,” she said.
Bretaña said a presidential declaration would help the DOE expedite measures to address the shortage, facilitate private-sector investment in new and expanded generating facilities, and accelerate transmission and substation projects already in the pipeline.
Local officials and business leaders have raised concerns over recurring brownouts across the Visayas as forced outages, scheduled maintenance and reduced output at major power plants strained electricity supply.
While the return of some generating units has provided additional supply, the grid has continued to experience tight reserves as other major plants remain unavailable.
The Visayas grid was placed under yellow alert as recently as Sept. 28, when available capacity stood at 2,572 megawatts (MW) against peak demand of 2,374 MW, leaving a margin of only 198 MW. Three major coal-fired generating units were unavailable at the time.
Ban review sought
Meanwhile, Cebu Energy Rights Advocates (CERA), a Cebu-based energy advocacy group, urged local officials in Negros and Bohol to review their bans on coal-fired power plants, arguing that their dependence on electricity generated on neighboring islands adds pressure to the interconnected grid.
In a statement, CERA convenor Nathaniel Chua said responsibility for providing sufficient baseload power—electricity available around the clock—should be shared across the region.
“Demand for power is shared by one Visayas grid; therefore, the responsibility for the burden of baseload supply must also be shared,” he said.
According to CERA, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental and Bohol adopted ordinances prohibiting coal-fired and diesel power plants in 2019, 2018 and 2018, respectively.
The group argued that the restrictions have left the provinces dependent on electricity generated elsewhere despite their push for renewable energy.
CERA said Negros has more than 950 MW of installed generating capacity, much of it from solar facilities that do not generate electricity during evening peak hours.
With around 240 MW of baseload capacity from the Palinpinon geothermal plants against peak demand of roughly 450 MW, Negros relies on imported electricity at night, the group said.
Bohol, meanwhile, has peak demand exceeding 100 MW but dependable local generating capacity of only 26 MW to 30 MW, according to CERA. — Ed: Corrie S. Narisma
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