The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) presented its financial and operational highlights for the first nine months of 2026 at a media briefing held at the Meralco building on Oct. 28. Speakers included Chairman and CEO Manny V. Pangilinan, Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer Betty C. Siy-Yap, Senior Vice-President and Head of Regulatory Management Jose Ronald V. Valles, Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer Ronnie L. Aperocho, and Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGEN) President and CEO Emmanuel V. Rubio.

Figures shared at the briefing show the company's consolidated core net income (CCNI) continuing to grow, reaching P45 billion for the nine-month period of 2026, up from P30 billion in the same period of 2023. The earnings mix has also shifted markedly: in 2024, the parent distribution utility (DU) accounted for 58% of CCNI while generation contributed 25%; by 2026, the DU share had declined to 45% while the generation share had risen to 41%. The numbers point to a company whose growth is increasingly being driven by power generation rather than by its traditional distribution business.

In energy sales, the distribution utility was generally flat from 2024 to 2026 at around 41,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh), while generation sales nearly doubled, from 11,556 GWh in 2024 to 21,419 GWh in 2026, according to data presented at the briefing.

Writing in his BusinessWorld column, Bienvenido S. Oplas Jr. attributed the gains to what he described as sharp management and rapid execution of plans by MGEN President Manny Rubio and his team. He noted that the gas business and the renewable energy (RE) segment, led by MTerra Solar, tripled their output over the two years, while the coal or thermal business posted only small, marginal expansion because of the Department of Energy's (DoE) continuing moratorium on new coal plants.

From Blackout Economics to BESS

With more rooftop solar plus industrial and grid-scale solar in the country, daytime prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) are becoming cheaper than nighttime prices, especially on the Luzon grid, Oplas observed — a reversal of the typical pattern in which prices peak during evening hours. He attributed this to large and rising solar capacity paired with few battery energy storage systems (BESS).

He cited Negros island, which has no coal plant, as an illustration: excess solar output during the day is followed by frequent, if not daily, "Earth Hours" at night.

Drawing on regional data, he noted that the Philippines' estimated behind-the-meter (BTM) capacity in 2025 — covering generation or storage systems such as residential rooftop solar and on-site commercial batteries — stood at 24 megawatts (MW), while front-of-the-meter (FTM) capacity at the utility or grid level, including large-scale wind and solar farms and utility-scale batteries, was at 1,687 MW.

Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) data, meanwhile, showed that as of June 30, 2026, net-metering consumers had a combined peak capacity of 232 MW, and 181 distributed energy resources participants had a combined peak of 226 MW. Including unregistered rooftop solar, these figures are already high, Oplas argued, underscoring the need for more BESS to help flatten solar supply from 6 a.m. to possibly midnight.

Some legislators in the Senate and the House, as well as DoE officials, have blamed the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) as among the causes of frequent rotating blackouts and yellow alerts — issued when grid reserves run thin — in the Visayas and, at times, Mindanao. In the columnist's view, this is an unfair accusation that corners the grid operator, compelling it to help solve the problem while defending its position as merely the transmitter — not the generator — of new power supply.

NGCP's Project Airbag

Project Airbag is described by NGCP as a "transmission-side initiative to deploy BESS that can provide fast response storage and greater operating flexibility across the Philippine grid… short-term transmission relief supporting — not replacing — long-term generation investment."

Under the program, NGCP has 850 MW of ongoing BESS projects in six areas nationwide, 400 MW of which are in Calatrava, Negros Occidental alone. In addition, 1,000 MW of BESS projects across 12 sites nationwide are under assessment, including 100 MW in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental. The medium-term goal is to scale up to 10,000 MW within five years.

The BESS installations will sit near existing NGCP transmission facilities, where 4,478 MW of transmission infrastructure remains available — indicating a surplus, not a deficit, in transmission capacity nationwide, according to the column.

Oplas called the initiative a good idea, since BESS stores excess electricity rather than generating it. However, when the stored electricity is released at night, the batteries technically become the generator, which may place NGCP in a gray area of engaging in power generation in violation of the EPIRA law — the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, which unbundled the power sector into generation, transmission, distribution and supply.

As a compromise, he suggested that the BESS projects near NGCP facilities could proceed, but with NGCP receiving only the service, not the assets. He further floated the possibility that Synergy Grid Development of the Philippines (SGP) could put up a sister BESS trading company and sell those assets to the public and corporations.

More broadly, Oplas urged the various national and local agencies and bureaucracies to relax or remove hurdles to private-sector construction of new thermal power plants such as coal, as well as BESS, and called on the ERC to lift the suspension of the reserve market. Whether those hurdles are relaxed, and how the ERC responds on the reserve market suspension, are the immediate regulatory items to watch.

From Energy Poverty to Energy Abundance

In the columnist's assessment, the country has arrived at its current difficulties because of two big, related mistakes by the DoE and the climate establishment. The first is high renewable energy targeting — 50% RE of total electricity by 2040 — instead of high terawatt-hour (TWh) targeting. The second is pursuing a transition from fossil fuels to RE, instead of a transition from energy poverty to energy abundance.

He cited 2025 data showing the Philippines with only 129 TWh of total power generation, compared with 200 TWh in Thailand, 210 TWh in Malaysia, 329 TWh in Vietnam, and 383 TWh in Indonesia. From 2015 to 2025, average annual generation increases were 16.7 TWh per year in Vietnam, 14.9 TWh per year in Indonesia, and 6.0 TWh per year in Malaysia, against only 4.7 TWh per year in the Philippines.

Given these numbers, Oplas proposed TWh-based targeting — regardless of source, fossil fuel or otherwise — in place of the 50% RE by 2040 goal he criticized.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. Research Consultancy Services and Minimal Government Thinkers, and an international fellow of the Tholos Foundation. He can be reached at minimalgovernment@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared in BusinessWorld on Nov. 2, 2026: https://bworldonline.com/opinion/2026/11/02/790873/meralcos-financial-report-and-ngcps-project-airbag/