Cleantech to expand Bulacan solar farm by 30MW

By Lenie Lectura – April 15, 2018
from Business Mirror

CLEANTECH Global Renewables Inc. expects to push through with the expansion of its solar farm in Bulacan by 30 megawatts (MW) this year.

“We are looking at expanding our Bulacan. Thirty megawatts is our next phase. We are definitely looking to expand and maybe by the third quarter this year, we will start constructing,” said Salvador Antonio Castro, Cleantech president and CEO. The company launched in 2016 its 15-MW solar farm in San Ildefonso, Bulacan, at a cost “close to $2 million per MW.”

The expansion of the solar farm, he added, is valued at “less than $1 million per MW.”

Cleanteach will sell the output of its Bulacan project, under the project proponent, San lldefonso Alternative Energy Corp., to distribution utility firms via power-supply agreements (PSA). He mentioned the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) and the Retail Electricity Supply (RES) market as possible customers.  “We are talking to Meralco. We are talking to others. We are also looking at RES. Obviously, just like everybody else, we are looking for PSAs. It’s a ready market. You are paid for seven days and there is no 12-month to 16-month delay in collection unlike in feed-in-tariff [FiT] projects,” he said.

Its 15-MW project was enrolled under the FiT rate of P8.69 per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the next 20 years. However, payment from the government has been delayed as it has yet to seek approval from the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Castro said the cost per kWh of the 30-MW project will be pegged at spot-market rates.

“We follow the trend in WESM [Wholesale Electricity Spot Market]. It has come down from the last two to three years. The average in the last 12 months is something at P3.75 per kWh or less. We need to get it lower than the WESM average,” he added.

Once the expansion project takes off this year, Cleantech will proceed with “several projects in the pipeline.”