PH Solar & Electricity News — Week of September 21, 2026
TL;DR
The Visayas spent another evening on red alert on 24 September, 2,292 MW available against 2,495 MW of demand, with three large coal units still down. One of them, Therma Visayas 1, had a published return date of 15 September. ACEN gave up two solar contracts worth 456 MW because it could not buy the land in Pagbilao or reach the site in Botolan. The DOE told a hearing it now wants the Visayas planned as three subregions that can each run islanded. Basic Energy broke ground on a 43 MWac solar plant in Negros with no battery attached. The theme two weeks running is that the problem is the evening, and almost nothing being built addresses the evening.
Grid
Visayas back on red alert with a 203 MW shortfall and a slipping repair schedule
NGCP put the Visayas grid on red alert from 4 to 9 p.m. on 24 September, with yellow alerts from 2 to 4 p.m. and 9 to 10 p.m. Available capacity was 2,292 MW against 2,495 MW of peak demand. Three large coal units were down — Therma Visayas 1, Panay Energy Development 3 and KEPCO SPC 2 — and an emergency shutdown on the Tabango-Kananga 230kV Line 2 cut imports.
What this means
The repair schedule is slipping, and that is checkable rather than a matter of opinion. On 7 September the DOE published return dates for the units that were out: Therma Visayas 1 on 15 September, PEDC 3 on 3 October. Nine days past its date, Therma Visayas 1 was still on the outage list on 24 September. The alert count moved the same way. NGCP counted 30 red alerts through 3 September; Philstar put the running total at 39 by 15 September. The red window itself has not moved at all: 4 to 9 p.m., after rooftop output has gone and while everyone is home. Panels do nothing for that window. A battery sized for those five hours does, and it is a much smaller pack than one sized to carry a whole night.
GMA News (opens in a new tab) · Philstar (opens in a new tab) · Department of Energy (opens in a new tab)
Market
ACEN gives up 456 MW of solar because it could not secure the land
Two ACEN subsidiaries relinquished early-stage solar operating contracts. Abagat Energy gave up a 336 MW site in Pagbilao, Quezon on 11 September over land acquisition problems, and SolarAce2 gave up 120.30 MW in Botolan, Zambales on 17 September over site access. ACEN disclosed both to the stock exchange the following week and said neither had reached a final investment decision.
What this means
That is 456 MW of announced pipeline that will not be built, and not one panel was the reason. Both projects died on land: buying it in Pagbilao, reaching it in Botolan. Hold that next to the 7 September briefing, where ACEN lent its own units more than ₱9 billion for 500 MW of storage and 300 MW of solar in Zambales. Announced capacity and delivered capacity are different numbers, and a good share of the gap between them is land. That particular risk does not exist on a roof you already own, which is the one structural advantage rooftop solar holds over the utility-scale pipeline people quote at you when they tell you to wait.
pv magazine (opens in a new tab) · BusinessMirror (opens in a new tab)
Policy
DOE wants three Visayas subregions that can each run islanded
DOE Undersecretary Mario Marasigan told a 21 September hearing the department wants the Visayas planned as three subregions — Leyte and Samar, Cebu and Bohol, Negros and Panay — each holding enough capacity to serve its own demand in islanding mode if the others go offline, while staying interconnected. He put 253 MW of ancillary services in the second week of October.
What this means
Read what islanding admits. The plan is for each part of the Visayas to survive being cut off from the rest, which is a planner's way of saying the interconnection cannot be relied on. Marasigan's own October arithmetic makes the point: 253 MW of ancillary services arriving in the second week, against roughly 501 MW unavailable that same week for maintenance. The baseload that actually closes the gap is dated 2028 and later. The logic scales down to a house without changing shape at all. Islanding is exactly what a battery and a transfer switch do for one household, and that version needs no master plan and no 2028 date.
The Manila Times (opens in a new tab) · Department of Energy (opens in a new tab)
Market
Basic Energy breaks ground on a 43 MWac Negros solar plant with no storage
Basic Energy Cadiz 1 broke ground on 18 September at Barangay Luna in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental. The ground-mounted plant is 54.26 MWp DC and 43.41 MWac across more than 60 hectares, using about 84,784 modules and 145 inverter and medium-voltage station units, connecting about 5.4 km away. It holds a GEA-4 award and targets commercial operation on or before 31 December 2026.
What this means
Note where this is. Negros sits in the subregion that spent September on red alert, and a 43 MWac plant with no battery attached adds nothing to the 4-to-9 p.m. window that causes those alerts. That is not a knock on the project. It is the same limit your own roof has, stated at utility scale. Daytime generation displaces daytime consumption, and it pays because the units you stop buying are charged at the retail rate, not because panels cover the evening. Anyone selling you a panel-only system as outage insurance is selling you the wrong product for the problem you actually have.
Power Philippines (opens in a new tab) · BusinessWorld (opens in a new tab)