Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, is braced for rotating power outages in the coming months as some major power plants undergo scheduled maintenance shutdown.
Although generating capacity has increased, shutdowns between August and October will result in unreliable power and leave many people dependent on non-mains power.
Philippine President Aquino (pictured) has set up a programme to offer loans to end users and electricity cooperatives to rent or buy gensets to see them through the rolling black outs.
The Mindanao Modular Generator Sets Programme is being viewed as a short-term quick fix to meet the electricity demands of the island until base load power plants come online in 2015.
The Philippine Department of Energy has committed 4.5 billion Philippine pesos (US$1,024,167,500) to implement the scheme.
