The Waiver Workaround: How MORE Power Solved Iloilo City’s Decades-Old Jumper Problem

When MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power), led by billionaire Enrique K. Razon Jr., assumed control of Iloilo City’s power distribution grid in 2020, the infrastructure was on the brink of collapse. Combined technical and non-technical system losses stood at a staggering 28%. Hazardous, makeshift “jumper” cables crisscrossed informal settlements, triggering frequent transformer overloads and chronic blackouts across the city.

For decades, the industry’s default response to electricity pilferage was aggressive enforcement: cutting illegal wires, issuing fines, and threatening legal action. However, MORE Power President and CEO Roel Castro identified a fundamental flaw in this traditional approach: most unauthorized users were not trying to steal power out of spite, but out of necessity.

Removing the Land Title Bottleneck

Under standard Philippine utility regulations, applying for an electric meter required proof of land ownership or formal lease agreements. For thousands of informal settlers living without land titles, obtaining authorized utility service was an administrative impossibility.

To break this impasse, MORE Power introduced a simple yet transformative policy: a property rights waiver. Applicants were permitted to register for an electric meter provided they signed a document clarifying that utility installation did not grant them legal ownership or rights over the land they occupied.

To execute the policy, MORE Power deployed 250 security and field personnel in day and night shifts across Iloilo City. Rather than severing illegal wires, field teams mapped out unauthorized connections and helped residents complete the waiver paperwork on the spot.

From 28% Grid Losses to Industry Benchmark

The policy shift yielded immediate operational results:

• Mass Conversion: Between 90% and 95% of approached households opted to regularize their connections immediately.

• Rapid Onboarding: Over 10,000 previously unmetered households joined the formal electrical grid within the first 12 months.

• Surging Customer Base: Active metered connections grew from approximately 62,000 in 2020 to nearly 107,000 today.

• Drastic Loss Reduction: System losses dropped to 10% in year one before hitting the Energy Regulatory Commission’s (ERC) strict 5% regulatory cap within four years.

Beyond the balance sheet, formalizing these connections dramatically improved community safety by eliminating raw, uninsulated wiring that previously posed constant electrocution and fire risks. With accurate demand data now available for informal settlements, MORE Power has been able to optimize transformer capacities and prevent neighborhood outages. Following its success in Iloilo, the company has expanded the waiver-based model to affiliated utilities in Bacolod, Negros, and Bohol.

Source Credit: Bilyonaryo.com