Twenty-five years after the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) restructured the country’s electricity sector, government and industry players are expected to raise a toast to “market liberalization” as a success story. Whether consumers feel just as energized, however, is another matter entirely—one that could spark a debate hotter than a transmission line tripping during the peak of summer.

This is the trigger alert: behind the steady rise of billions in private power profits lies EPIRA’s uncomfortable truth. What was sold as an efficiency reform has, for many Filipino consumers, devolved into a system of rising costs and dimmed expectations. Worse, there is still no silver lining in sight.

I will not even dive into the backstory of how certain power facilities ended up in the hands of today’s industry actors; that tale deserves a saga of its own—something closer to the fabled One Thousand and One Nights anthology than a footnote in policy history. The only difference is that there is no Aladdin here to grant consumers’ wishes, though the “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” plot twist might just upend the entire industry’s deregulation narrative.

When the power deregulation law was being crafted, EPIRA was marketed as the long-awaited cure for soaring electricity costs. Yet for millions of Filipinos, it stands as a monument of broken promises: billions in privatized profits accumulate on one side of the meter, while on the other, households are left to shoulder the relentless climb of their electric bills.

Industry players often frame their rates as “cost-competitive,” but that means nothing when ordinary ratepayers are being steadily drained. Even investors, particularly manufacturing firms, hesitate to pour capital into the country because electricity costs serve as a massive barrier to entry. This drag on competitiveness stifles industrial growth, ultimately depriving the economy of the quality jobs and broader expansion it should be generating.

Additionally, the industry’s restructuring originally dangled a light at the end of the tunnel. Nevertheless, consumers today are still confronted with strained power supplies and recurring rotational blackouts, as clearly reflected in recent grid alerts in Luzon and Visayas. In most off-grid and far-flung areas, the situation is even worse; communities continue to endure persistent blackouts and service interruptions more than two decades into market deregulation.

So when private firms insist that EPIRA has been a success, it rings hollow. Beyond polished balance sheets and rising corporate incomes, the reality for Filipino consumers is a daily grapple with high costs and unreliable power. Perhaps it is time to look past financial statements and face the hard fallout written on every power bill and felt during every blackout.

On the surface, the industry proudly points to a growing number of players as proof of competition. A closer look at the roster, however, reveals a familiar pattern: market share still largely circulates within a tight circle of powerful families, turning what was branded as competition into an oligarchic rotation of control over the entire power sector.

Truthfully speaking, the industry was arguably more diverse and competitive during the era of the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in the 1990s, when a wider mix of credible foreign and local players entered the market. That offers a stark contrast to today’s restructured market, which has merely concentrated competition into fewer, more powerful hands.

Even in policymaking and regulation, there has been a worrying decline in the quality and independence of key appointments across the Department of Energy (DOE), the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), and attached agencies. Energy governance is now treated as a space for political accommodation rather than a critical pillar of the economy. Due to entrenched weaknesses in the appointment process, many officials typically bend to the influence and preferences of private sector players while remaining largely unresponsive to the voices and real needs of consumers.

Indisputably, investor confidence matters. But when policy and regulation simply bow to investor demands without any assurance of actual infrastructure investments, it becomes a one-sided exercise that prioritizes hypothetical capital over real households struggling under the weight of rising utility bills.

For example, the retail electricity rate of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s largest utility serving over eight million customers, has already climbed to around ₱14.33/kWh. However, regulators appear largely unfazed as they continue to approve and auction additional capacities, primarily for intermittent renewable energy (RE) technologies that are priced at even higher levels.

Market operators often argue that Philippine electricity rates are higher than ASEAN neighbors like Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia because those countries subsidize their energy tariffs. But what they conveniently overlook is that those subsidized rates are fueling stronger industrial expansion, drawing in large-scale manufacturing investments, and generating real economic multiplier effects. Meanwhile, our persistently high electricity costs continue to weaken competitiveness, deter investors, and push the Philippine economy further down the regional ladder.

In fact, many offshore market analysts and lenders increasingly view the Philippines as a cautionary tale of faulty market deregulation—one that is severely struggling to resolve both its technical inefficiencies and institutional weaknesses. Consequently, investors now attach a higher risk premium to the Philippine energy sector, viewing its heavily private-led structure as more uncertain compared to the stable, predictable, vertically integrated state-run power systems of our Asian neighbors.

Recently, one of the sector’s emerging trends has been the growing number of Filipinos turning to online and accessible sellers of solar equipment and lights. This shift is driven by a simple but telling logic: to shield themselves from rotational blackouts and, just as importantly, to finally bring down electricity bills that legitimate industry players have failed to lower.

I know several people who turned to solar equipment bought through e-commerce platforms. In doing so, they managed to cut their electricity bills by hundreds to even thousands of pesos. This highlights a grim reality for many households: warranted relief from rising power costs is no longer something they can expect from the power system itself, but something they are forced to carve out through their own version of the “power of choice.”

Why is this happening? Because after 25 years of EPIRA, the official “power of choice” remains largely out of reach for millions of Filipino households, and the industry has never fully resolved its supply problems. This dilemma is further worsened by regulators at the ERC, who are widely perceived as anti-consumer for continuing to approve new capacities that pile additional costs onto an already overburdened public.

I am all for renewable energy installations, especially when paired with reliable energy storage systems, but both the DOE and the ERC must anchor their priorities on affordability. The continued approval of escalated and punishing electricity rates has gone far beyond what households can reasonably bear.

The reason many Filipinos are turning to online solar purchases is that they have become affordable alternatives. Vendors offer panels, inverters, batteries, and complete kits at prices significantly lower than full-service solar installations, turning these self-driven energy solutions into a practical response to an increasingly costly power system. Buyers now see this equipment as backup power during blackouts, or as a way to reduce dependence on utility companies when power supply chain players fail to deliver seamless services.

To be sure, there are real risks in buying and installing solar equipment without proper standards or qualified expertise. Poorly handled systems can lead to electric shocks and fire hazards from undersized wiring, loose connections, or incorrect protection devices. There are also serious dangers from battery setups that are damaged, overcharged, or improperly installed without safety safeguards.

It is precisely due to these risks that power companies and regulatory bodies like the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) have moved toward tighter regulation and oversight of solar systems entering the Philippine market. The DTI now requires compliance with certification processes and adherence to Philippine National Standards (PNS) to ensure that safety and quality are not sacrificed in the rush toward wider solar adoption.

Catch-up regulation aside, this trend among Filipino consumers reflects a desperate reality: when electricity becomes increasingly unaffordable and service reliability is on shaky ground, households will inevitably seek alternative solutions to reduce costs and secure a stable supply of power, without the constant fear of being plunged into darkness.

To top it all off, the “power of choice” envisioned 25 years ago remains stuck in an endless traffic jam of reforms. Compare this with Singapore, which initiated its energy market reforms on a parallel timeline to ours; its residential consumers have been enjoying real consumer choice in their electricity market since 2018. This contrast spotlights sharply just how far the promises made for the Philippine market have drifted from their intended outcomes.