As the Philippines accelerates its renewable energy adoption, the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector grapples with ensuring power quality and reliability. At the Solar & Storage Philippines Live 2025 conference, industry experts underscored battery energy storage systems (ESS) as a critical solution for delivering uninterrupted power and high-quality electricity, particularly for high-stakes facilities like data centers.

Colin Steley, CSO Director at Stratcon, highlighted how ESS addresses the power quality issues introduced by solar energy. “The thing with solar is that yes, it’s providing the cheapest kilowatt hour rate, but it also deteriorates the power quality in a facility. Batteries have the ability through the inverters… of cleaning out the power quality. So that does allow it to go into facilities that demand high power quality like data centers.”

He explained during a panel discussion that this capability is vital for data centers, which require stable power to prevent costly operational disruptions. The need for reliable power extends to hospitals and manufacturing plants, where downtime carries significant financial consequences. 

Steley emphasized, “If for whatever reason one or two coal power stations go offline… that will mean that certain areas will have brownouts and blackouts. And in terms of the monetary value for those facilities going offline, that’s huge.”

The panel stressed that ESS offers more than just backup power. BenJeMar-Hope Flores, Head of ESS Services and Solutions at Nascent Technology Corp, noted its broader value: “It’s really looking at ESS in general for the other value that it offers, just aside from the savings. It’s resilience, reliability, especially for these crucial facilities.”  

While ESS holds immense promise, its adoption in the C&I sector faces significant hurdles, primarily due to unclear use cases and a lack of supportive policies to attract investment. The panelists called for regulatory reforms to unlock ESS potential, emphasizing the need for clear revenue streams through “value stacking”—combining services like frequency regulation, voltage regulation, peak shaving, and backup power. 

“The value has to come from different areas, like for example, frequency regulation, voltage regulation, on top of the backup and peak shaving capabilities of these batteries,” Flores said. “The incentives now are more indirect, like importation incentives… So there’s not much on the revenue side or revenue options for C&I,” Flores adds.

The panel also explored innovative business models like Energy as a Service (EaaS), where third-party ownership of batteries could lower upfront costs for C&I facilities such as condominiums and factories. 

Ripple Power Managing Director Mike Mayandoc added that clear use cases are critical for investor interest: “I think it all comes down to the use case for these batteries to become feasible for investors to even take a glance and look at these projects.” 

Without targeted regulations from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to incentivize these services, adoption remains sluggish, despite the Philippines’ dynamic electricity market and initiatives like the Retail Aggregation Program (RAP), which could enable ESS integration through bundled energy users.

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