VEC allots ₧5B for capex

BY LENIE LECTURA – JUNE 18, 2021
from Business Mirror

Vivant Energy Corp. (VEC) is earmarking P5 billion for capital expenditures to increase its power portfolio to 500 megawatts (MW) by 2023.

Vivant Energy Chief Operating Officer Emil Andre Garcia, during a press briefing after the company’s stockholders’ meeting, said bulk of the amount would be allocated for renewable energy (RE) projects, mostly solar and wind. “That’s not pure RE but also conventional. Large chunk of that is allocated for RE.”

Of the P5 billion, Garcia said P3 billion is allocated for this year.

The power firm’s capacity is expected to hit 500MW from the current 387MW with new RE projects in the pipeline.  “More than 95 percent of the 387MW is conventional technology. That’s why our focus now is RE. We are allocating a lot of resources in order to hit this goal,” commented Vivant Corporation president Arlo Sarmiento.

The power firm is studying several sites for its planned RE projects. Garcia did not mention specific locations but said these will be put up in Luzon and Visayas.   “Premature to disclose right now but we may close them by the year-end. For wind, we have enough data set in Eastern Visayas, hoping to break grounds sometime next year,” he said.

For solar, Garcia said Vivant Energy intends to beef up its solar rooftop projects “to end with 11MW this year and another 13MW by next year.”

Aside from RE, the company is planning to put up hybrid solar-diesel-battery system.

“We are quite comfortable with hybrid technology especially diesel because of our expertise in SPUG (Small Power Utilities Group) markets,” said Sarmiento. “SPUG market is something that we want to maintain our market share.”

Vivant Energy is the holding arm of power-related investments of publicly listed Vivant Corp.