Power Crisis in the Philippines

There is a lot of cases about shortage of electricity in many places here in the
Philippines. Most of this effect happens during summer time especially in Mindanao
Areas. Hydropower is reduced due to the seasonal dry spell, and a major gas
production facility supplying power plants will be shut down, so that electricity reserves
will be running lower low enough that a random tripping or shutdown of a power
plant on the grid might cause widespread outages. Or there may be more proactive
management of an electricity shortage, with rotating outages among localities, a
practice that is fairly common in the southern island of Mindanao. As predicted, the
Philippines is heading into a severe summer power crisis.
The main response to the predicted shortages has been the Interruptible Load
Program (ILP). This enrolls large establishments who have their own generators
(shopping malls, office buildings, factories) to voluntarily interrupt their power from the
main grid and start running their generators when a shortage is predicted. The concept
is that if an outage occurred they would have to do so anyway, so it is more socially and
economically beneficial to do this in a planned fashion. Though the details of
compensation its source and amount have not been finalized, many firms have
signed up. Some private sector economists feel this will be sufficient. Others are not so
sanguine, including the governments Department of Energy. Thus, last year, the
administration of President Noynoy Aquino requested a joint congressional
resolution granting him emergency powers for a limited time period to fast-track
contracts for new power generation. The proposal was controversial naturally the
political opposition was suspicious of increased presidential powers; some felt that since
the ILP was in place it was not necessary, and others recalled the Ramos example as
yielding high-priced power. In the event, Congress has not (as of this writing) passed
the resolutions both the Senate and House of Representatives passed a version, but
a conference committee has been unable to resolve differences. (Rood, 2015)

Bibliography
Rood, S. (2015). Energy Crisis in the Philippines.