Meralco asks power firms to join auction for 850MW supply
BY LENIE LECTURA – JANUARY 24, 2022
from Business Mirror
The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is inviting interested power firms to challenge Terra Solar’s unsolicited bid offer of 850 megawatts (MW) of mid-merit renewable energy for 20 years.
In a bid invite, the utility firm said Terra Solar proposed a P6.0800 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) headline rate and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).
“Meralco, through the Third-Party Bids and Awards Committee (TPBAC), hereby invites all interested and qualified parties to participate in the competitive challenge bidding,” Meralco said.
Terra Solar is the special purpose vehicle of Prime Infrastructure Capital Inc. and Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings, Inc. It will source power from its planned solar power plants with Energy Storage System (ESS) located in Batangas-Cavite, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, and Zambales. The bid invite stated that these plants are under development.
The offer includes 600 MW to be made available for Meralco by February 26, 2026; while the additional 250 MW is expected to be delivered starting February 26, 2027.
Interested bidders have until February 2 to submit their Expressions of Interest. A pre-bid conference will be held on February 4; while the bid submission deadline is on March 7. The bidders may change their indicated nominated power plant until February 28.
They must pay P4.25 million in participation fee to become an interested bidder and to obtain bid documents. An additional P2.5-billion bid security is required.
This CSP round is in compliance with the Department of Energy’s policy on Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and forms part of Meralco’s efforts to source up to 1,500 MW of its power requirements from renewable energy sources.
“We aim to accelerate our transition to cleaner energy as we pledge to source 1,500MW of power requirements from renewable energy sources in the next five years,” Meralco President Ray Espinosa said last year. “We’re also committed to building up to 1,500MW in utility scale renewable energy power plants in the next five to seven years.”
Incidentally, Meralco’s power generation arm, Meralco PowerGen Corp., is developing renewable projects with a total capacity of 1,500MW. It has already built a 55MW solar power plant in Bulacan, which started operations in May last year.
