The Rising Costs of Electricity in the Philippines
And we don't even have that many Data Centers here yet!
Hello there!
WARNING: This is a long one, but I’ll connect it to AI at the end, I promise!
The other day, I posted on Facebook complaining about this month’s high electricity bill. My wife and I are finding it funny that everyone is now lecturing us on household energy consumption because of it. 🤣
Totally my bad, I should’ve provided more context. First of all, I hate repeating myself, since my career background is a story I've already told soooo many times before. So much so that I didn't think I needed to tell the story again because I feel people are getting tired of it. But I forgot that not all people have heard of it, especially new followers and non-followers of the page. I shouldn't have assumed everyone already knew. 😅 But then again, I also didn’t expect my post to blow up, since it’s not the usual content I put out. I just wanted to vent my anger, man. But alas, here we are.
If you've heard my story, feel free to ignore this if you want. Although this time I'll go a bit deeper. It's been years since we both left Meralco, the largest power distribution utility in the country, so I guess it's safe to divulge more details about our previous jobs there. So here goes...
Guys, my wife and I are former Meralco employees. (PLOT TWIST!) It was both our first jobs fresh out of college, having graduated with an economics and an electrical engineering degree, respectively. We’ve had lengthy careers at Meralco. After almost a decade, I left in 2016 having successfully switched careers into tech. My wife, meanwhile, left in 2019 completing seven years of service.
We were not SIMPLY Meralco employees either, as we were assigned in departments that worked directly on energy sourcing and dispatch, and the operation and monitoring of the WHOLE energy distribution system. I won't go too much into details, but we had direct knowledge of where energy was being sourced, how it was transmitted from the power plants to the Meralco franchise up to the substations and, finally, to the distribution transformers perched on poles that serve your areas. We had direct contact with the power generation companies Meralco had contracts with, WESM, and of course, NGCP. As in one phone call away. 🤣 With a single click of a mouse, we were capable of cutting off and restoring power in any area of the franchise, from streets to blocks to barangays to whole cities. We were also in charge of dispatching and coordinating field crews during maintenance and emergency power restoration efforts. Looking back, it was a pretty cool gig, salary notwithstanding.
[Fun facts: I even ran an anonymous blog in the late 2000s to early 2010s where I occasionally provided information and explainers about scheduled power interruptions, storm-induced blackouts, and the energy crisis we had back then. Meanwhile, my wife once graced the cover of the monthly company magazine (she’s still embarrassed about it lol). We also both won medals in different sports categories at the MVP Olympics, an annual sports event held between companies under the Metro Pacific umbrella, which also included PLDT, Smart, TV5, Maynilad, etc.]
Why am I bringing these all up? To gloat? No, not at all. I just want to put things into perspective before I say this: most of you missed the point of the original post. Again, it’s totally my fault for not framing things properly, not yours. Nevertheless, I sincerely thank all the people who shared their “energy saving” tips in the comments. I’m pretty sure a lot of people learned from them. But yeah, that was not the point of the post.
First, I may not know everything, but my background in electrical engineering and the power industry should at least count for something. It equips me with a particular set of skills that enables me to critically examine our electric bill. My rant had nothing to do with broken meters, nor jumper cables from unscrupulous neighbors, nor appliance efficiency, nor can it be solved by solar panels, especially since we live in a condominium unit.
Second, the pattern of our consumption history doesn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary. In fact, our total kWh consumption was actually LOWER than last year! This meant that our energy conservation efforts were working!
Lastly, the point of the original post was that despite our consumption being lower year-on-year, despite us using the AC much less than last year, despite my wife not working from home anymore… The Peso value on our electricity bill still went up significantly! Comparing with July which had the same level of consumption as last month, our bill today is higher by 12.5%!
Look at it this way, for every PHP 100 we paid last July, we would now have to pay PHP 12.5 more for the exact same kWh consumption. For every PHP 1,000 paid last July, we would now have to pay an additional PHP 125. Our actual bill last July 2025 was around PHP 5,600, now it’s PHP 6,300. Again, FOR THE EXACT SAME KWH CONSUMPTION.
Reiterating what I said in the post, a 12.5% increase in less than a year is absurd. I’m surprised that no one, especially the government, is alarmed about this. Meralco has been steadily increasing their rates these past few months. Recently, the ERC approved another FOUR BILLION PESO recovery package for Meralco. With generation costs expecting to increase due to the stupid war in the Persian Gulf, and (I promised I’d make the AI connection) the government’s push for more energy-intensive data centers in the country, things are just going to get worse, way worse. (I would’ve been less annoyed if I knew that all these profits were shared fairly with Meralco employees but that’s a topic for another day.)
Yes, we absolutely should be doing our own part in reducing our household energy consumption. But the government should also heavily scrutinize distribution utilities (like Meralco), NGCP, and the power generation companies. Maybe it’s high time we revisit EPIRA law, which has disastrously failed its goal of lowering energy prices, and even reconsider nuclear energy. We already have the third highest electricity rates in the whole of Asia, and from the looks of it, we’re gunning for the top spot.
What do you think? Is Meralco getting away with robbery? What’s the situation in your country? Let me know on the comments!
Thanks for reading all the way through. Until next time!
See you soon,
Rem (Kuya Dev)
Host, AI Guardrail Podcast
