Published March 21, 2017, 10:01 PM By Myrna M.
Velasco
Relatively pioneering player Solar
Philippines opts to test its business case overseas with planned offshore solar
farm developments starting this 2017.
The company has grand ambitions of
becoming a leading solar industry player in the world, contemplatively
challenging the supremacy of other developed markets that already etched their
foothold in the sector.
“Solar Philippines intends for its
current projects to give it economies of scale, so it can start expanding
internationally by the end of 2017, and make the Philippines a leader for solar
energy worldwide,” the company has noted in a statement to the media.
To its credit, Solar Philippines
emerges as the “brave soul player” that has been defying the status quo, or the
business model that leans heavily on the industry’s addiction to feed-in-tariff
(FIT) subsidies.
Solar Philippines just broke ground
last week for its another greenfield development of 150-megawatt solar farm in
Concepcion,Tarlac.
For another venture in Tanauan, the
company earlier secured a power supply agreement with Manila Electric Company
(Meralco) at P5.39 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) pass-on cost to consumers, a
considerably higher rate to what Solar Philippines now claims as global cost
level of R2.00 to R3.00 per kWh, but of which it sees attainable with vertical
integration of solar panels’ production facility into its whole chain of
operations.
Solar Philippines President Leandro
Leviste stated that “vertical integration is the key to making solar
cost-competitive.” The company said it will be manufacturing solar panels at
its factory at the First Philippine Industrial Park in Batangas.
He stressed “if others ask why our
costs are so low, it’s because the process for development, construction and
equipment supply in the Philippines has until now been very inefficient. We are
simply bringing our costs closer to other markets, where solar is now an
average P2.00 to P3.00 per kWh.”
The company still pits itself as a
competitor to coal-fired power generation, currently the country’s biggest
source of baseload capacity.
Solar Philippines’ apparent aim
would be to dislodge part of coal’s pie in the energy mix by integrating
storage into its project development milieu so it can hurdle the
“intermittency” issue of solar farm developments.
“Without even factoring the
environmental externalities, based purely on direct cost, Solar-plus-Storage is
already cheaper than coal, and especially cheaper than diesel and gas,” Leviste
said, adding that “we’ll prove that in the market this year, and show you don’t
need to choose between economic growth and environmental sustainability.”
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