Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Solar Philippines in partnership talks for $1-B solar hub



By Danessa Rivera (The Philippine Star) | Updated June 20, 2016 - 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines – Solar Philippines is in talks with three global solar manufacturers for its $1-billion production hub in Batangas, its top official said.
Solar Philippines president Leandro Leviste said the company has received commitments from three solar manufacturers to build the succeeding phases of its manufacturing plant in Tanauan, Batangas.
“There’s actually three that have already commitments with us. They are among the top 10 solar manufacturers in the world,” he said, declining to disclose the identities of these firms.
Earlier this month, Solar Philippines bared its plans to put up one of the world’s largest solar factories located in Tanauan, Batangas worth $1 billion in the next three years.
Initially, the company is investing $100 million for the first manufacturing line and is partnering with other solar manufacturers for the rest of the two gigawatt (GW) plant capacity.
“For the initial phase, we will  own and operate the line ourselves,” Leviste said. “We’re going to invite multiple partners…they will be involved more so in the expansion, where we’ll do bigger and do the cells in the Philippines.”
Having more solar manufacturers in the country will allow “more economies of scale, and the more likely the supply chain will move from China to the Philippines,” the official said.
“If you have a very big manufacturing industry in the Philippines, then upstream parts will set up in the Philippines. This is going to create thousands of direct and indirect jobs and that’s why we’re trying to bring in all of the Chinese solar manufacturers to make this the next hub after China and the Philippines a global leader,” Leviste said.
Solar panels produced from the Batangas plant would be used in solar projects Solar Philippines has lined up in Luzon and in Mindanao starting later this year.
This will include a 135-megawatt (MW) solar farm in Tarlac, which “can be updated to a much larger capacity once new transmission comes in,” Leviste said.
The company is also putting up a smaller solar project in Cagayan de Oro.
“As for the Cagayan de Oro project, it will be smaller because land is not as available there. First phase will be 16 MW,” he added.
In particular, the Tarlac project will be the first to use Philippine made solar panels. “We’re going to have our manufacturing line operational by December of this year,” Leviste said.
Construction for both plants is set to start in the third quarter of this year and is targeted for completion by end-2016 to early 2017, he said.
Leviste further said this project would not be under the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) scheme, since it is already economical to put up solar farms given the recent drop of solar panel prices in the market.

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