Due to the war in the Middle East, there has been a tremendous oil crisis everywhere, including the Philippines, where around 80% of its supply is coming from that region.
Filipinos are now lining up in panic at the gas stations even if the price per litre has ridiculously soared to more than twice their original prices due to the limited supply. Luckily, days before the diesel price went up, my wife and I decided to have a full tank and carefully planned our trips to save on fuel.
After a week or two of steadily climbing petrol prices, we could see new EVs and HVs sporting the streets everywhere.
To couple the above unfortunate event, there has been circulating fake news that there will be a looming energy crisis, a nation-wide electrical power shutdown from the distribution utilities in the Philippines, and people started to panic and rush to alternatives – solar.
The effect of this solar rush has now been high prices of solar panels, PV equipment and batteries. Vendors have dictated their prices and hoarded their supply and inventory to their full advantage. Even scammers have taken the opportunity of this new lucrative demand.
My wife and I are both engineers, electronics and electrical respectively and early adopters and preachers of renewable energy. We installed our PV (off-grid and grid-tie) system a couple of decades ago. We even manufactured our own solar panel using cells bought from the U.S. and sold them. I remember graduating electrical engineering students from the nearby university had approached us to document the process from start to finish as part of their thesis. We eventually stopped the business in 2015, as we could not compete with the cheaper made-in-China PV panels and equipment that started dumping the market.
Overall, the effect of solar rush is good for the environment, which can prevent or at least delay the global warming whose effects are very profound here in the Philippines. Every year, summer heat becomes unbearable, and during rainy seasons, we could practically run out of alphabet in naming the typhoons. But we are still here; even when there were many chances and opportunities abroad, we always come back. I will leave you with a quotation from a German national, who has a Filipina wife, during one of our trips to Puerto Galera in Mindoro island. About twenty years ago, my wife accompanied me to install a VSAT satellite for one of the Internet cafés lining up in Sabang, where we met the German owner, who grinned from ear to ear, wide-eyed like a boy who found his crush, and exclaimed while walking away from us towards the sea, “This… this is paradise!“