Guimaras has vaulted back onto travel lists due to its stunning beaches, picturesque island-hopping coves, and the renowned Manggahan Festival. Visitor numbers have surged: provincial officials say the island topped 1 million tourist arrivals in 2024, a first for Guimaras and a milestone they credit to an aggressive tourism push and a new Tourism Code.
The island is also pivoting to eco-friendly, agro- and wellness tourism, underlining how the island’s appeal is broadening beyond mangoes and white-sand day trips. Additionally, Guimaras anticipates the development of bridges that will connect the province to the neighboring islands of Panay and Negros.
Yet the island’s momentum runs headlong into an old constraint: electricity. Guimaras shares the Western Visayas grid, which suffered region-wide blackouts on January 2 to 5, 2024, afte rgeneration and transmission disturbances in the Panay sub-grid.
Iloilo City, which is Guimaras’ principal gateway, estimated as much as ₱400 to ₱500 million in daily losses during the January outage, underscoring how fragile the power supply in the sub-grid reverberates across tourism, retail, and services.
Although the trigger points were largely off the island, Guimaras consumers and tourism operators endured the same brownouts and rotating interruptions.
(Also read: Stunning Shores, Unstable Power: A Tale of Two Realities)
Inside Guimaras’ energy headache
At the distribution level, the Guimaras Electric Cooperative (Guimelco) has been the focus of reliability and pricing concerns. In October 2024, former local officials filed a complaint with the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) over high and volatile power bills, urging a scrutiny of its power supply agreements (PSAs). The petitioners also called for competitive bidding on PSAs to safeguard consumers.
In 2024, GUIMELCO customers faced a rollercoaster of power costs, sliding to just over ₱10 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in June before spiking past ₱17 by August, and then easing slightly to about ₱15 in September.
Scheduled power interruptions have also been frequent as Guimelco carries out repairs and upgrades that take feeders and substations offline. A look at its Facebook page shows that in August 2025 alone, several outages were reported, typically lasting two to six hours, including one that stretched from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on August 26.
Even beach resorts were affected, drawing this complaint from consumer Emelina Villar: “Ndi specific info niyo! Amuni klase serbisyo na hatag nio?! 8 a.m. kag 6 p.m. brownout niyo diri sa Morobuan wala pa kamu naayawan!?? Asta sobong wala gyapon kabalik kuryente!” (Your information is not specific! Is this the kind of service you provide?! You cut power here in Morobuan at 8 a.m. and again at 6 p.m.—aren’t you tired of this already?! Up to now, electricity still hasn’t returned!)
Meanwhile, another frustrated consumer reacted to a deferred interruption notice, suggesting that nightly blackouts had become the norm. J-boy Granada Gildore wrote: “teh ang 1 to 6 am ya nga bran out kada gab-i ano na ea??” (So what’s going on with these 1 to 6 a.m. brownouts every night?)
(Also read: How a Power Crisis Plunged Siquijor into a State of Calamity)
Factors compounding Guimaras’ power woes
Beyond day-to-day outages, deeper structural issues continue to aggravate the island’s fragile power situation.
- Grid tail-end exposure
The Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) warned that the January 2024 blackout exposed the dangers of overreliance on a handful of large coal plants. The group stressed the need to diversify power sources with more distributed and flexible generation to prevent sub-grid failures from spiraling into prolonged outages.
However, National Electrification Administration (NEA) Administrator Antonio Mariano Almeda pointed to grid congestion as a key weakness, saying Western Visayas’ renewable output cannot move freely to Panay because of transmission limits. “A lot of REs are hooked up to the grid, and the grid was not ready to accommodate all fluctuations caused by RE plants, and it gave way,” he stated.
With Panay sitting at the far end of the Visayas network, surplus clean energy often goes underutilized while shortages persist.
- Underinvestment and slow build-out.
A study by the Institute of Contemporary Economics (ICE) found that electric cooperatives in Guimaras and Panay fell far short of their investment targets, spending just ₱2.38 billion of the ₱10.52 billion they had programmed between 2022 and September 2024. Only around 3% of cooperative budgets are directed toward new infrastructure, with most funds consumed by routine upkeep.
Weak infrastructure spending has left consumers and businesses exposed to recurring outages, unstable voltage, and rising costs. Households face higher bills while the region’s competitiveness suffers, discouraging new investment.
Meanwhile, the energy sector is evolving fast with renewables, climate pressures, and distributed power sources reshaping demand. Yet Panay and Guimaras remain unprepared, stuck with outdated systems ill-suited for the future.
- Insufficient contingency reserves.
The Visayas grid continues to face reliability concerns, with the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) revealing it still lacks a full contingency reserve in case of sudden outages. As of January 2024, the region’s reserve compliance stood at 94%, trailing behind Luzon’s 100% and Mindanao’s 97%.
Hopes for greater stability rest on the Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone project, which the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) finally completed after a four-year delay. Energized in April 2024, the line can transmit power equivalent to two 400-MW plants from Negros and Panay to Cebu, easing pressure on the grid.
- Single-point interconnection dependency
For years, Panay Island’s power supply had been funneled through a single transmission path — the Panay-Negros line linking Barotac Viejo, Iloilo, to E.B. Magalona, Negros Occidental. Energy executives likened this to having only “one door” into the grid, leaving the island vulnerable to supply constraints, weak protection systems, and unstable imports.
That picture began to change with the completion of the CNP project. The new link added another “door” by connecting Panay to Cebu through Negros, aiming to ease congestion on the grid and strengthen reliability.
Growth at risk
While Guimaras emerges as one of Western Visayas’ fastest-rising destinations, its momentum is being tested by a fragile energy system. The January 2024 blackout is a reminder of how vulnerable the regional economy remains to grid instability.
For Guimaras, the stakes go beyond inconvenience. Tourism thrives on reliability, from hotel operations to transport and dining. Unless the island secures a more dependable power supply, the very growth it celebrates risks being undermined by an unreliable grid.
Tourism in Guimaras relies on consistent power—from hotel operations to transport and dining—and even brief outages can severely affect small resorts and local businesses. After the said blackout, former Senator Nancy Binay warned of the toll on tourism and local businesses in Guimaras. “How do you promote tourism ‘pag may mga ganitong unreliable power supply sa atin?” (How do you promote tourism if we have this unreliable power supply?), she asked.
Binay added that the blackout serves as a “sharp reminder” that long-term solutions are seriously needed to address the problem of electricity since even brief outages can severely affect small resorts and enterprises.
The same challenge plagues other tourist destinations across the country, where investments in tourism and economic growth risk being undone by an unstable power backbone that undermines both operations and the visitor experience.
Sources:
https://www.philstar.com/nation/2024/02/23/2335571/guimaras-eyeing-eco-friendly-tourism-development
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/01/05/2323533/blackout-iloilo-losing-p500-million-daily
https://dailyguardian.com.ph/guimelco-faces-complaint-over-high-electricity-rates/
https://www.facebook.com/guimelco
https://dailyguardian.com.ph/power-sector-must-adapt-to-new-challenges
https://dailyguardian.com.ph/contingency-reserve-for-visayas-grid-a-challenge-iemop
https://dailyguardian.com.ph/panay-islands-grid-and-backup-power-deemed-insufficient/