Iloilo’s modernized power grid may have spared the city the worst of a two-month wave of Visayas outages, a new economic report suggests.
The Institute of Contemporary Economics (ICE) studied the grid-stress episode that hit Iloilo City and the wider Visayas region. Its finding: the seven interruptions logged between June 2 and June 19 were “not ordinary local outages.” They were grid-security events, triggered by thin reserves, forced plant shutdowns and transmission limits.
It noted that on June 10, the Visayas grid ran on an 8-megawatt margin against 2,421 MW of demand. That thin cushion, the report said, means “a small adverse movement in supply, demand, or deliverability can push the system toward curtailment.”
Each Manual Load Dropping order from NGCP, ICE estimated, puts roughly P12.7 million in Iloilo economic output at risk.
Served by Primelectric through MORE Power, Inc., Iloilo City’s electricity grid has been quietly undergoing upgrades the past few years. That modernization, ICE noted, served as a shield when the regional grid buckled between May and June 2026.
Since taking over Panay Electric Company in 2020, Primelectric has poured over P2.6 billion into Iloilo City’s grid. System losses fell from 30 percent to 4.75 percent. Yearly outages dropped from 18 to less than two.
“A modern power system is not one that merely restores service after interruption,” the ICE report said. “It is one built with enough redundancy, automation, reserve capacity, and coordination to prevent avoidable curtailment.”
The Institute’s findings come as the Senate weighs expanding MORE Power’s franchise — a push ICE frames as vital, with Panay’s power demand climbing 18.5 percent a year.
