Secretary Sharon Garin says the Department of Energy is ready to punish generation companies that repeatedly fail to deliver the power they have committed to the grid.

Good.

But the question ordinary Filipinos and businesses in the Visayas are entitled to ask is simple:

When?

The Visayas grid is no longer suffering from occasional technical problems. It is suffering from a reliability crisis.

Since the beginning of the year, the Visayas grid has already experienced 47 yellow alerts and five red alerts as of early July, according to reports. In May, the forced outages of Therma Visayas and Panay Energy Development Corporation units contributed significantly to the tightening of available capacity, prompting both yellow and red alerts and rotational interruptions.

And this is not merely about households losing electricity.

Every hour of unreliable power can cause a factory to stop production. A restaurant can lose inventory. A hotel can lose bookings. A hospital has to rely on generators. A small business can lose an entire day’s income.

Brownouts are an economic tax on people who did nothing wrong.

That is why Garin’s threat to impose sanctions on erring generation companies is welcome. The DOE has already issued show-cause orders involving 175 generation companies over forced outages, reduced output and failure to deliver committed capacity. The agency has warned that violators could eventually face permit revocation or blacklisting.

But again: when does accountability become action?

A show-cause order is not punishment. An investigation is not punishment. A press conference announcing that sanctions are possible is not punishment.

At some point, government has to make an example of those who repeatedly fail.

Of course, I am not suggesting that every plant outage automatically deserves cancellation of a permit. Power plants are complicated machines. Equipment fails. Extreme weather happens. Fuel supply can be disrupted. Some outages are unavoidable.

But there is a very big difference between an unavoidable breakdown and chronic underperformance.

If a generation company repeatedly fails to maintain its plant, repeatedly declares forced outages, repeatedly delivers less than what it committed, and repeatedly contributes to grid instability, then government should have the courage to say:

Enough.

The electricity market cannot operate on the assumption that generation companies enjoy all the benefits of market participation while consumers bear all the consequences of their failures.

And this is where an even bigger question emerges.

Is Garin clearing the old system for the new one?

There is an interesting coincidence in the timing of all this.

While Garin is becoming increasingly aggressive toward underperforming generators, she is also one of the strongest advocates of bringing nuclear power into the Philippine energy mix.

The Philippines has been preparing for nuclear power, including small modular reactors (SMRs), which are considered a potentially more flexible and scalable technology. The United States, through the USTDA, has already been working with the Philippines on SMR technology, with Garin prominently involved.

The DOE has also targeted integrating nuclear power into the country’s energy mix by 2032, while Garin has expressed hope that the first nuclear project application could be approved before the end of the Marcos administration.

So one cannot help but wonder:

Is this simply enforcement—or is it also the beginning of an energy-sector transition?

I am not saying Garin is deliberately trying to eliminate existing generators to make room for nuclear players. There is no evidence to establish that.

But the policy direction is unmistakable.

The government wants a power sector capable of attracting new investment, new technologies and new sources of dependable electricity. At the same time, it is becoming less tolerant of aging generating assets that cannot perform reliably.

And perhaps that is precisely the disruption the Philippine power industry needs.

Because the question should not be whether a generator is old, new, coal-fired, renewable or nuclear.

The question should be:

Can you deliver reliable electricity to the Filipino consumer?

If you cannot, why should the government continue to allow you to participate in a market where your failure is ultimately paid for by consumers?

We should not be afraid of new players.

The Visayas crisis has exposed something uncomfortable: we simply do not have enough dependable generating capacity when demand rises, and several plants go offline at the same time. 

The DOE itself has warned that the Visayas supply problem could persist for another one to two years while new generation and transmission projects catch up with demand.

That is a long time for businesses to operate under uncertainty.

And this is why new players should be welcomed—whether they bring solar, wind, battery storage, geothermal, natural gas, advanced nuclear or SMR technology.

But the government must make sure that the transition does not simply replace one group of privileged players with another.

Competition must mean competition.

New technology should have to prove itself.

Old technology should have to prove itself.

And everybody should be judged by the same standard:

Reliability. Efficiency. Price. Accountability.

That is the real test for Garin.

Not whether she can issue show-cause orders.

Not whether she can threaten blacklisting.

But whether she can actually clean up a power sector that has become far too comfortable with the idea that Filipinos will simply endure another brownout.

Secretary Garin, the Visayas has heard enough promises.

If there are generation companies that cannot perform, sanction them. If they cannot be rehabilitated, replace them. If they cannot compete, let new players come in.

And if the future of Philippine energy includes scalable nuclear power, then let us debate it honestly, transparently and rigorously—not as a political favor to anyone, but because Filipinos deserve an electricity system that works.

Because in the end, the consumer should not care who owns the power plant.

The consumer just wants the lights to stay on.