Solar PHL in talks with potential power buyers

BY LENIE LECTURA – JUNE 28, 2022
from Business Mirror

Solar Philippines said Tuesday it would soon submit another offtake proposal to complete its 9 terrawatt hour (TWh) per year of target contracted energy.

“The company has indicated that it has at least one more power supply offer to be disclosed. This would complete its potentially 9 TWh per year of contracted energy, which would serve as a critical mass of demand for its 10 GW (gigawatts) of developments scheduled to commence operations mostly between 2025 (and) 2026. Energy that remains uncontracted may be sold into the spot market,” Solar Philippines founder Leandro Leviste said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

He did not divulge details pending results of ongoing discussions with potential buyers of the company’s planned power generation capacity.

“When we began talking about 10 GW, many were in disbelief, because the total installed solar capacity of the Philippines last year was just over 1.1 GW. But we hope that having contracts for the majority of 10 GW has now made this plausible,” said Leviste.

Solar Philippines has recently submitted similar offers to substantially contract its 10 GW of solar farm developments scheduled to commence operations mostly in 2025 and 2026. The offers, should these meet the requirements of the buyers, are still subject to regulatory approval.

Last week, the Department of Energy (DOE) released the results of the Green Energy Auction Program (GEAP) in which Solar Philippines won 70 percent of all the auction’s renewable energy (RE) capacity–1380 MW out of 1967 MW– and 91 percent of all the solar capacity–1350 MW out of 1490 MW.

These are the 200MW Concepcion Tarlac 2 of Solar Philippines Commercial Rooftop Projects, Inc. (SPCRPI), 280MW Santa Rosa Nueva Ecija 2 of Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp., 450MW Tayabas solar power of SPCRPI, 30MW Calatagan wind power of Solar Philippines Calatagan Corp., 300MW Kananga-Ormoc solar power of Solar Philippines Visayas Corp., and 120MW General Santos solar power of SPCRPI.

Part of this would be sourced from the first 500 MW being developed by Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corporation (SPNEC), with the rest to be sourced from projects under entities that would be owned by SPNEC after its asset-for-share swap with its parent company.

These include projects with a total 1.8 GW planned capacity: the Tarlac-2 400 MW Solar Farm; the Quezon 800 MW Solar Farm; the Leyte 400 MW Solar Farm; and the GenSan 200 MW Solar Farm. Under the DOE’s terms of reference, bid capacities refer to net export and not plant gross capacities.

This brings the total capacity of substantially contracted Solar Philippines projects to over 6 GW.

The largest of these solar developments is Terra Solar Philippines Inc., a joint venture with Prime Infrastructure Holdings Inc. of tycoon Enrique Razon, touted to be the world’s largest solar project and would be more than twice the total capacity of solar operating in the country.

The joint venture plans to construct 3.5-GW of solar and 4.5-GWh of battery storage to supply Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) 850 MW of mid-merit; another over 200 MW of projects contracted with Meralco; and over 175 MW of already operational capacity.

“We are completing certain contracting processes, the company plans to provide more details on these projects in the coming days,” Solar Philippines told the exchange.

“We were fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time, developing these projects since 2016. Now we have contracted this capacity, we look forward to work with other companies and stakeholders to deliver these projects and help achieve our country’s targets for renewable energy,” Leviste added.