(The Philippine Star) | Updated January 22, 2018 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The energy business
group of Ayala Corp. is looking to develop a 150-megawatt (MW) diesel power
plant in Pililia, Rizal to serve the peaking requirements of the Luzon grid,
its top official said.
AC Energy CEO John Eric
Francia said the group is now going through pre-development process for
the diesel power plant.
“[We’re now in]
permitting, [getting] ECC (environmental compliance certificate). We’re doing
the studies now. We’re hopeful that we’ll get to start the construction as soon
as we complete all the requirements,” he said.
In October 2017, AC
Energy DevCo Inc. was cleared to conduct a grid impact study (GIS) on a 300-MW
diesel modular generator set power plant in Pililia, Rizal.
AC Energy DevCo is
affiliated with Ayala Energy Holdings Inc., which took over Bronzeoak
Philippines Inc. It owns solar projects in Negros — San Carlos Solar
Energy, Negros Island Solar Energy and Monte Solar Energy.
Francia said the
peaking plant will be able to complement the intermittent supply being provided
by renewable energy (RE) projects once RE policies are in place.
“We believe the country will need more peaking
and reserve, ancillary capacity…especially in a world where you inject more
renewables,” he said.
“This is in line with
thinking that RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standards) will succeed. You will see
intermittency…and you need ancillary for that,” Francia said.
A provision of the
Renewable Energy Act of 2008, RPS mandates power industry players to produce
and source a certain percentage of electricity from RE sources such as biomass,
waste-to-energy technology, wind energy, solar energy, run-of-river
hydroelectric power systems, impounding hydroelectric power systems, ocean
energy and geothermal energy.
Last month, Energy
Secretary Alfonso Cusi signed a circular which prescribes the rules and
guidelines in the establishment of RPS for on-grid areas which mandates
distribution utilities (DUs), retail electricity suppliers including those
power generation companies serving directly-connection customers to source or
produce a certain percentage of their electricity requirements from eligible RE
resources.
The RPS for on-grid
areas is initially anchored on the country’s aspirational target of 35 percent
RE share in the energy mix by 2030, which will be reviewed under the
forthcoming updating of the National Renewable Energy Program.
The DOE has set 2018
and 2019 as transition years to prepare the power industry in developing their
compliance plans to the minimum RPS requirements.
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