As the month of August is now more than halfway, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is now being prodded to make public the outcome of its investigations on the ‘forced outages’ violations of the generation companies that triggered the double whammy of rotational blackouts and rate spikes in the summer months.

At the same time, the regulatory body is called upon for it to finally put into action its earlier pronouncement in Congress that it will start penalizing within this month the erring generation companies (GenCos), primarily those that went beyond their permitted outage allowance in their power generating units.

To recall, ERC Chairperson Agnes T. Devanadera sounded off in a Congressional hearing last month that the decisions of the regulatory body on penalty enforcements against the GenCos will be issued starting first week of August – but until now, there is not a single ruling rendered yet by the Commission.

The ERC chief indicated that the power firms will be meted with fines and penalties primarily for breaching their allowable forced outages, which is anchored on the reliability indices set forth by the industry regulator across energy technologies.

In a statement to the media, advocacy group Power for People Coalition (P4P) primarily put the ERC to task for showing “leniency towards the GenCos that exceeded their allowed outage days” – which was a scenario in the power system subsequently resulting in last summer’s rotating power service interruptions.

In view of that, the consumer group formally sent a correspondence to Devanadera, seeking “transparency” on the status of the 35 power generating facilities that are owned by 17 GenCos, which had been served with show-cause orders by the ERC for non-compliance on allowable forced outages in their plants.

P4P Convenor Gerry Arances stressed that “the ERC owes it to the consumers to shed light on why disruptions in their electricity service still happen even though there supposedly are enough power plants in operation.”

He stressed “the injustice and inconvenience suffered by consumers at the hands of these GenCos are already undeniable and we need ERC to stand guard against even more abuses.”

Arances added if the regulator will not be transparent with its findings on its investigation of the power plant outages, then that will be extremely unfair to the Filipino consumers who were made to burden high rates in their electric bills – for reasons that the ERC as well as policymakers cannot explain until now why simultaneous forced outages of power plants have been recurring in the industry.

The P4P letter to the ERC stipulated that “we make this inquiry in view of our right as electric consumers to be informed and given adequate access to information on matters affecting our electric service pursuant to the Magna Carta for Residential Electricity Consumers.”

The consumer group further nudged the ERC whether it sought any justifiable information from the GenCos if the outages of their power facilities will still be a continuing phenomenon in the weeks, months or years to come; and if there is any way for the industry regulator to halt these seemingly synchronous outages in power generating facilities.