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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