Senator Francis Escudero wants to penalize power firms for the recent Panay-wide power outage that caused widespread business losses and opportunities in the affected cities and municipalities in Western Visayas.

Escudero called on the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission to summon the officials of the Panay Energy Development Corporation and the Palm Concepcion Power Corporation.

He wants the agencies to explain in detail how the massive power disruption in Western Visayas occurred.

"I want them to explain the unscheduled shutting down of their plants and why it took a longer-than-usual period to bring the power supply back," he said.

"For PCPC, I cannot understand why it took them four days to resupply power instead of just four hours, which is the usual time to resupply power in cases of maintenance shutdowns," he added.

Escudero said a thorough investigation is necessary to avoid similar occurrences in the future and avoid a surge in the prices of electricity, likening the situation to the previous power crisis in Metro Manila in April last year.

If the power firms' explanation is found wanting, Escudero said they should be penalized for the business losses they created because of the blackouts.

"This is necessary so that other power generation companies or gencos will exercise more care and prudence in the operation of their plants as well as compliance with existing regulations," he added.

He noted that power has three components — generation, transmission and distribution.

"All three must be looked into in order to have a complete picture and not simply do finger-pointing on how to prevent a similar occurrence from happening again in the future," said Escudero.