As the dry season bites and Middle East tensions push fuel prices up, keeping the lights on isn’t about building more plants—it’s about using what we have smarter.

Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) and the Department of Energy are calling on businesses to slash energy waste and join the Interruptible Load Program (ILP), a voluntary scheme where companies temporarily dial down consumption to stabilize the grid.

“We continue to encourage enrollment because the program becomes more effective the more we have customers that can participate," said Ma. Leticia L. Sapina, Meralco Generation and Transmission Economics Lead Specialist said in a statement on Thursday.

"Within the ILP participant pool, we can also rotate who will be called to de-load,” she added.

With 105 companies enrolled and 513 megawatts of de-loading capacity, the program has spared 3 million households from rotating outages since 2014.

“We can see that there are no expected alert levels in the Luzon Grid considering that all of the capacities will be available as expected and new power project investments will come online as expected or targeted,” said Noriel Christopher R. Reyes, Officer-in-Charge of the DOE Power Planning and Development Division-Electric Power Industry Management Bureau.

Still, surging fuel costs weigh on bills.

DOE campaigns now push efficient cooling, smarter appliance use, and energy-efficient technology.

“How we consume energy is what we can control. Supply is outside of us. For businesses, there are opportunities for you to do an energy audit or a spot check. Think of energy efficiency as an opportunity not as an obligation,” said DOE Energy Utilization Management Bureau Director IV Patrick Aquino.