PH Solar & Electricity News — Week of August 17, 2026
TL;DR
Meralco August rate fell ₱0.0428 to ₱14.7833 per kWh, but only because a ₱9.5-billion refund landed on the bill. The FIT-All rose 67 percent to ₱0.3359 per kWh from the same billing period. NGCP put the Visayas grid on red alert on both Monday and Tuesday, with the DOE expecting alerts to continue into next week and reach Mindanao. Meralco worked monsoon outages down to the last 2,000 customers. Goldilocks switched on 1,010 kWp of rooftop solar under a First Gen power purchase agreement.
Rates
Meralco August rate slips to ₱14.7833 per kWh as a ₱9.5-billion refund starts
Meralco August all-in rate for a typical household fell ₱0.0428 to ₱14.7833 per kWh from ₱14.8261 in July, about ₱9 off a 200 kWh bill. The cut comes from a ₱9.5-billion AWAT refund the ERC approved, worth ₱0.5861 per kWh spread over six months. It was nearly cancelled out by NGCP charges up ₱0.3024 and taxes and other charges up ₱0.2113 per kWh.
What this means
A ₱9 cut on a 200 kWh bill is not a trend, it is a refund. The ₱0.5861 per kWh credit runs six months and stops, and the ₱0.4278 per kWh AWAT credit already on the bill will end too. Add both back and the rate underneath is roughly ₱15.80 per kWh. Payback figures on this site are calculated at ₱14.83, so the refunds are quietly working against anyone sizing a system right now: they make grid power look cheaper than it is going to be.
Policy
FIT-All charge rises 67 percent to ₱0.3359 per kWh from the August bill
The ERC granted TransCo provisional authority to raise the Feed-In Tariff Allowance from ₱0.2011 to ₱0.3359 per kWh, a 67 percent increase effective with the August billing period. TransCo said the FIT-All fund was ₱322.9 million in the red as of 7 May 2026. A household using 500 kWh pays about ₱168 a month in FIT-All alone. The approval is provisional, pending hearings.
What this means
FIT-All sits on every electricity bill in the country and funds guaranteed 20-year tariffs for utility-scale solar, wind and hydro built under the old feed-in tariff scheme. Rooftop solar on a house receives none of it. FIT closed to new entrants, so a homeowner installing today is on net metering, where exports credit at generation cost of roughly ₱5 to ₱7 per kWh rather than the retail rate. You fund the subsidy either way, which is one more argument for using your own output instead of exporting it.
Philstar (opens in a new tab) · Meralco (opens in a new tab)
Grid
Visayas grid on red alert Monday and Tuesday, DOE expects more next week
NGCP raised red alerts over the Visayas grid on both Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday 18 August the red alert ran 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., with available capacity of 2,410 MW against 2,502 MW of peak demand, a 92 MW shortfall. Philstar reported 26 plants on forced outage and 14 derated, more than 800 MW unavailable. The DOE expects alerts to continue next week and to reach Mindanao.
What this means
Third week running for the Visayas, and Energy Undersecretary Mario Marasigan now frames it as an outlook rather than an incident. Look at the shape of the alert window: 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Panels are already fading by 4 p.m. and produce nothing after 6. An evening shortfall is the one problem a bigger array cannot solve. If the goal is riding out rotational cuts in Cebu or Negros, the money belongs in battery capacity, and a grid-tied system with no battery will shut off with the grid regardless of how much sun is left.
Inquirer Business (opens in a new tab) · Philstar (opens in a new tab)
Grid
Meralco works monsoon outages down to the last 2,000 customers
Meralco said service interruptions caused by the enhanced southwest monsoon were down to about 2,000 customers on Tuesday morning, from 10,000 the day before, with most of the remainder in Cavite and Quezon. Crews worked through flooding across the franchise area. One Meralco Foundation ran relief for more than 1,400 families in Bulacan and Cavite.
What this means
Storm outages and rotational brownouts fail differently and need different answers. A rotating cut is scheduled, short, and often in daylight, which suits a modest battery. Flood damage to distribution lines can run for days and is what actually strands a household. A grid-tied array helps with neither, because anti-islanding protection shuts it down the moment the line goes dead. For multi-day monsoon outages the realistic options are a hybrid inverter with storage, or a portable power station sized for the fridge and phones.
Inquirer Business (opens in a new tab) · BusinessWorld (opens in a new tab)
Market
Goldilocks brings 1,010 kWp of rooftop solar online under a First Gen PPA
Goldilocks Bakeshop inaugurated a 516 kWp rooftop system at its Lapu-Lapu City production facility and a 494 kWp system at the Richbake plant in Pangasinan, taking installed capacity to 1,010 kWp. It projects about 1.06 million kWh of annual electricity savings and 716.48 tonnes of avoided emissions. First Gen built both systems and maintains them under a 10-year solar power purchase agreement.
What this means
The number worth keeping is the yield. 1.06 million kWh from 1,010 kWp is roughly 1,050 kWh per kWp a year, about 27 percent under the 1,440 kWh per kWp this site assumes for Metro Manila. Corporate projections are deliberately conservative and these roofs are in Cebu and Pangasinan rather than Manila, but it is a fair sanity check on quotes: if an installer builds your payback on 1,400 kWh per kWp with no shading or soiling loss named, ask what they assumed.