June 11, 2018 | 12:04 am By Victor V. Saulon, Sub-Editor
SOLAR Philippines Power Project
Holdings, Inc. targets to deliver 24 hours of electricity to two towns in
Masbate and Cagayan provinces by the end of June as the company expands its
initiative to build microgrids in poorly served areas in the Philippines.
Solar Philippines President Leandro
L. Leviste said the move is under the company’s social enterprise called “Solar
Para Sa Bayan (Solar For The People)” in which he expects to lose money
initially.
“With around 10 megawatts (MW) of
solar and back-up diesel, we will be bringing 24-hour power to a dozen or more
towns before the end of this year for the first time in history,” he told
reporters.
“We’ll be doing 24 hours in
Claveria, Masbate hopefully later this month,” he said, adding that Calayan
town in Cagayan province is also set to be energized in June.
Masbate and Cagayan are two of the
eight provinces that Solar Philippines plans to put up a microgrid, or a
small-scale electricity grid that can be operated independently from the
country’s interconnected network of power transmission facilities.
The other provinces that Mr. Leviste
identified are Mindoro, Romblon, Palawan, Davao, Batangas and Isabela. About
500,000 people are expected to benefit when the microgrids have been put up by
the end of the year.
“We’re losing a decent amount of
money initially, but the business case is that if we can help these people get
out of poverty, their electric consumption per capita will increase and it will
become a viable market,” Mr. Leviste said.
In March, Solar Philippines
inaugurated its first microgrid in Paluan, Mindoro, which Mr. Leviste claims to
be the largest solar battery microgrid in Southeast Asia with 2 MW of solar
panels, 2 MW-hour of batteries and 2 MW of diesel backup.
“Across the portfolio, the average
cost is — not our price — the cost is probably P16 to P20 per kilowatt-hour and
we’ll be selling it at as low as our budget can afford us to lose money,” he
said.
Next to Claveria and Calayan, Solar
Philippines will be launching microgrids in Divilacan and Maconacon towns in
Isabela “all within 60 days,” Mr. Leviste said.
“The rest will come within four to
five months,” he added.
The microgrids will have different
power capacities, but for Claveria and Calayan, the demand is around 500
kilowatts each thus the power system will have a capacity of 1 MW each to allow
for some redundancies, Mr. Leviste said.
“We believe that this is a way of
looking at business that is largely absent in the Philippines where power
investors are used to the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) guaranteeing their
returns, and passing through all costs to consumers,” he said.
“We’re hoping that showing, however,
modest our means, we’re able to do this for half a million Filipinos, even the
bigger power companies can find it in their heart to devote more of their
resources to helping our less fortunate countrymen as well,” he added.
Asked how he is dealing with
resistance from electric cooperatives that hold the power distribution
franchise in the provinces, Mr. Leviste said: “First, the Constitution is clear
that no franchise shall be exclusive and the very franchises of these utilities
have a provision on non-exclusivity. So the notion that utility franchises are
exclusive is patently false. You can ask any lawyer that.”
Mr. Leviste said that if the
government allows the company to extend its coverage to not only the
underserved areas “that will enable us to offer lower costs to the unserved
areas without any government subsidy.”
He said he expects the Office of the
President to issue an executive order that will open up all the poorly served
areas in the Philippines to be served by the private sector.
“We don’t need any subsidy
whatsoever. If there is any subsidy we believe that it should be given to the
people and not the suppliers, which unfortunately is not the present
situation,” he said.
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