Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson urges more investors in renewable energy plants to ensure power stability.
"This is a warning that we cannot depend on our power generators now, we need more of them," Lacson said.
Lacson issued the statement amid power interruptions and manual load dropping affecting the province and other neighboring areas in the Visayas.
Yellow and red alerts have been issued since last week by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) because of several power plants shut down due to high heat index.
On Friday, 18 power plants in the Visayas are on a forced outage, while 10 others are running on derated capacities, the NGCP said.
A total of 757.7MW were unavailable to the grid.
Lacson said the shortage of power during the summer season is normal because there are more people using air conditioning on top of the forced outages.
During a recent forum with stakeholders, the Department of Energy reported that Negros Island has a total of 155.6 megawatts (MW) of committed power projects and 1,231.7 MW of indicative power projects.
Committed projects refer to projects that are ready for implementation or already being implemented while indicative projects are those in the planning stage.
These include biomass project in Victorias City, geothermal in Bago City, solar in Silay City, and battery energy storage in Murcia and San Carlos City.
Indicative projects are solar in the cities of Victorias, Bacolod, Cadiz, Silay, and Calatrava town, wind in Pulupandan, hydro in Sagay City, and battery energy storage in Cadiz.
The indicative projects will mean an additional 1,000 MW of RE in Negros until 2040.*