When Roel Castro walked into Iloilo City with a utility company in transition and a grid desperate for rescue, the city’s power problems could’ve been the perfect excuse to play it safe. He didn’t.
Instead, Castro, president and CEO of MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power), plugged into the chaos and flipped the switch on transformation.
“You look at it as a problem, I look at it as an opportunity,” he says, shrugging off challenges the way most people swat away mosquitoes.
“We really contributed, I would say, in a significant way,” Castro said in an online interview with Daily Tribune’s Straight Talk. “We don’t advertise things that we’re doing. I just want to do it silently... just do.”
From eliminating persistent brownouts to modernizing distribution systems and lowering power rates across regions, MORE Power’s presence has changed the game, not just in Iloilo City but increasingly in neighboring provinces as well.
“There was really no magic,” Castro said. “We were very precise in our planning… and more importantly, our principal was always ready with the resources.”
Iloilo was plagued with frequent power outages before MORE Power took over. Castro recalls requesting billions in investment to overhaul the city’s deteriorating power infrastructure. Over four years and an investment of P2 billion to P2.5 billion later, Iloilo now enjoys a stable and modern electricity system, something previously unimaginable.
“I told my people after February, there will be no more 12 hours, 10 hours, 8 hours outage. We’re done. If we’ll have outages — planned outages — these are for maintenance, of only two to three hours.”
Since MORE Power took over Iloilo’s power distribution in 2020, the changes have been electric — literally. Power interruptions, once a common complaint in homes and businesses, have sharply declined.
MORE has overhauled substations, deployed digital metering, and set up rapid-response systems. Castro didn’t just modernize the grid — he rewired the city’s outlook on what’s possible.
Under his leadership, MORE Power invested not just in poles and wires, but in public trust. Streamlined services, 24/7 customer hotlines, and transparency became the new standard.
Since assuming the power distributorship in Iloilo City in 2020 with just 74,196 customers, MORE Power expanded its customer base to close to a hundred thousand.
But this story isn’t just about kilowatts and cables. It’s also about vision — and Castro sees power as a catalyst for something bigger. In stakeholder discussions about Iloilo’s long-term development, he’s known to push ideas beyond the utility’s mandate.
“I don’t want to preempt because we have a planning [session] coming soon, but there have been recommendations — and one of those was the improvement in the bamboo industry because there is a demand,” Castro shares, hinting at how energy and enterprise can intersect.
Bamboo? Yes — because for Castro, every spark of demand is a chance to power up a local economy. He’s the kind of leader who talks infrastructure in one breath and rural livelihood in the next.
That entrepreneurial, community-first mindset makes MORE Power more than just a service provider.
The company has pushed to energize far-flung barangays, launched safety campaigns, and even explored solar integration — always with an eye on what best serves the city.
Today, Iloilo isn’t just experiencing fewer blackouts. It’s becoming a model for how a city can grow when its power sector gets a full-system reboot — led by someone who sees every voltage drop as an opportunity to do better.
The company’s impact is also felt in consumer wallets, as in the last two years, MORE Power’s rate is actually either the cheapest or the next cheapest in the Visayas. “When we took over Negros and Bohol, the three lowest rates now are Bohol, Iloilo and Negros,” Castro explained.
While Philippine rates still trail behind regional neighbors like Vietnam or Malaysia, MORE Power is actively positioning itself to compete at that level, especially for industries requiring competitive energy pricing.
That is where utility service matters most, its effect on the monthly billings for consumers.
Castro is deeply engaged in Iloilo’s overall development. As president of the Iloilo Economic Development Foundation, he is helping craft a long-term growth roadmap that includes industry diversification, the creation of ecozones, and strategic infrastructure partnerships.
“There is a very strong private sector and government work relationship [in Iloilo], and I think again, to attribute where Iloilo is — [it’s] really because of that,” he said.
“Education is also a very important ingredient in all of these,” Castro added, pointing to the presence of top institutions such as UP Visayas and the University of San Agustin as foundational to Iloilo’s long-term competitiveness.
Today, MORE Power serves about 45–50 percent of the total electricity demand on the island of Panay, including Iloilo, Capiz, Antique and Aklan. The rest are still operated by electric cooperatives — an area Castro sees as another frontier.
For Castro, the first five years were about rehabilitation and modernization. The next chapter, he says, will be about reaching a higher level of service — one that attracts world-class industries and makes Iloilo not just a city with reliable power, but a destination for investment and innovation.