TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol — While the overall Philippine electricity grid showed improvement toward the end of 2025, consumers in the Visayas and Mindanao are facing higher electricity bills due to localized supply shortages and transmission bottlenecks.
According to the latest report from the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP), the national average energy price rose to P4.38 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in December, up from P3.98/kWh in November.
Diverging Regional Conditions The increase was driven primarily by tightening conditions in the southern islands, even as Luzon benefited from lower costs:
- Luzon (The Outlier): Average market prices in Luzon dropped to P2.98/kWh, down from P3.52/kWh, thanks to a healthy supply surplus and declining seasonal demand.
- Visayas Constraints: Despite a slight increase in supply (106 MW), demand in the Visayas grew significantly faster at 181 MW. This led to a reduced supply margin and higher costs.
- Mindanao Deficit: Mindanao saw a sharper decline, with supply dropping by 245 MW due to planned and forced outages of generating plants, while demand increased by 25 MW.
Transmission and Outage Issues IEMOP identified two primary factors for the regional price hike:
- Plant Outages: A combination of scheduled maintenance and unexpected “forced” outages at several power plants in the south reduced available energy.
- Transmission Limits: Infrastructure constraints restricted the Visayas and Mindanao from accessing a greater share of lower-cost power generated in Luzon.
The Visayas grid typically relies on power imports from Luzon via the Leyte–Luzon high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnection, but these transfers were not enough to offset the local supply-demand gap in December.
System-Wide Performance On a national scale, the average system-wide supply reached 20,233 MW, an increase of 1.2 percent, while demand dipped slightly to 13,440 MW. Despite this improved national margin, the “regional divergence” underscores the ongoing need for more robust transmission projects and diversified power generation in the Visayas and Mindanao to ensure price stability for consumers in 2026.