Meralco ramps up RE projects
BY MYRNA M. VELASCO – May 30, 2023 03:25 PM
from Manila Bulletin
Power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) has hiked its pipeline of renewable energy projects raising its capacity to 1,700 megawatts, surpassing the five-year development plan earlier cast by its power generation subsidiary Meralco PowerGen Global Business Power Corp.
According to Meralco First Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Raymond B. Ravelo, while the goal of the company was just initially set at 1,500 megawatts, “our pipeline today stands at 1,700MW, and this is with a number of projects under various stages of development.”
He noted that the array of RE installations being advanced by Meralco will be those on clean technologies – encompassing solar, wind and battery energy storage systems.
So far, it is in the solar investment space that the company has already been gaining headway; while it has yet to firm up initial investment decisions on wind as well as on the deployment of energy storage systems.
The milestones logged by the company on RE ventures had been the commercial inauguration of its 68MWac Nuevo Solar facility in Currimao, Ilocos Norte; as well as its 75MWac solar project in Baras, Rizal which is due for completion by the end of second quarter this year.
The recently commissioned solar facilities were follow-through to the successful completion and grid integration of the firm’s 55MWac BulacanSol power project, which had its commercial operation date in 2021.
Ravelo indicated that on top of its solar portfolio, Meralco PowerGen-Global Business Power will also be pursuing its proposed 2,400-megawatt liquefied natural gas (LNG) power facility in Atimonan, Quezon.
“MGen GBP’s drive towards cleaner and greener energy will be marked with the conversion of its Atimonan One Energy projects from coal to liquefied natural gas or LNG for baseload supply,” he stressed.
The Meralco executive qualified that there is already an “ongoing ECC (environmental compliance certificate) application for the development of the gas-fired power plant.”
With the government’s aggressive push for massive RE installations in line with the country’s energy transition agenda, gas is being lined up as the flexible technology that can easily plug capacity gap when the variable RE technologies – primarily solar and wind – will not be available in the system.
