Solar Philippines’ 150-MW Tarlac plant completed in 2017

Posted on July 13, 2016
http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Corporate&title=solar-philippines&8217-150-mw-tarlac-plant-completed-in-2017&id=130342

SOLAR PHILIPPINES Power Project Holdings, Inc. expects to complete early next year a 150-megawatt (MW) solar farm in Concepcion, Tarlac with a built-in battery storage facility, which will finally address the problem of intermittency that comes with most renewable energy projects.

“It’s going to be the biggest in the country and most importantly, the largest unsubsidized solar in the world and the largest solar with batteries,” Leandro L. Leviste, Solar Philippines president, said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the BusinessWorld Economic Forum at Shangri-La at the Fort, Bonifacio Global City in Taguig City.

He said the construction of the solar farm is going on and once completed, it will have “no subsidies, displacing gas with batteries [and] offering the most reliable electricity on this planet.”

“Hopefully it’s going to change the game for all fossil fuel companies and will make them consider maybe instead of building coal let us shift to solar. It’s better business, no fuel requirements, no operating risks, no regulatory risks. It’s a safer, predictable investment for 25 years,” he said.

He said the move to build the solar farm with battery storage capability would show that solar power is now cheaper, cleaner and more reliable than all fossil fuels.

“I regret that the renewable energy industry up until now, has not given much reason for fossil fuel companies to think that way because they have been asking for subsidies,” he said. “And I think the only way to show definitely our claims to be true is to have a working solar farm that does just this.”

The solar farm’s battery will be using lithium ion, which Mr. Leviste has become the industry standard and is the same technology used in electric vehicles.

“Because of the scale of the electric car business, the battery cost has gone down by 50%,” he said. “Now you can find batteries at $200 per kilowatt-hour. At the start of this decade it was at $1,000 per kilowatt-hour.”

Solar batteries need about $200 per kilowatt-hour for them to be able to supply nighttime power.

“We are already there and the only way that we can convince people that we are there is to show them a working solar farm with batteries, that’s why we are doing that this year,” he said.

In illustrating that the cost of developing solar projects has gone down, Mr. Leviste cited the price used by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) when it came up with the original feed-in-tariff rate.

“The ERC’s initial calculations for the solar feed-in-tariff was a cost of around $2.5 million per megawatt (MW). Coal is around $2 million per MW. Solar is now half of what the ERC assumed,” he said.

He attributed the decline to the drop in the solar panel cost, which used to be the major cost component of solar projects. Still, he said other aspects such as construction needs to be more efficient and development needs to be streamlined. He said these “soft costs” would be the biggest driver to bring down the cost of solar systems.

With the battery component, he said the solar farm would continue to deliver reliable and consistent power even on gloomy weather and at nighttime.

Mr. Leviste also made the same announcement on the Tarlac project during his speech delivered during the forum. -- Victor V. Saulon