Senator Sherwin Gatchalian is calling for an investigation into the power situation in the Visayas and Mindanao, ABS-CBN reported on Tuesday. His call came as the grid placed the area under another Yellow Alert, according to the same report.
A Yellow Alert signals that operating reserves have fallen below the level needed to cover a contingency, though it does not necessarily mean outages will occur.
The push for a probe is not coming from the Senate alone. The Manila Times reported that the Energy Regulatory Commission has been urged to look into the Visayas-Mindanao power problems, while the Philippine News Agency reported that the Department of Energy has asked the Philippine Competition Commission and the Philippine Electricity Market Corporation to examine how power generation companies are pricing their output amid the supply crunch.
Manila Standard likewise reported that the DOE wants to check for possible abuse in the power market. Philstar.com reported that the department supports a regional price cap on electricity.
Taken together, the reports point to two tracks running in parallel: a legislative inquiry into why supply in the two island groups has been tight, and a regulatory review of whether generators have priced their electricity fairly during that tightness.
What to watch next is whether the Senate formally takes up Gatchalian's proposed inquiry, and what the competition and market authorities find once they finish reviewing generator pricing in the affected regions.
