By Ronnel W. Domingo October 31, 2018 at 5:22 am
Power distribution giant Manila
Electric Co. wants to go into renewable energy through its electricity
generation subsidiary, looking at building a portfolio of up to 1,000 megawatts
of solar and wind resources over the medium term.
Rogelio L. Singson, president of
Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen), said in a briefing that the company was focused
on the development of a portfolio of utility-scale solar generation projects to
supply the Luzon grid—particularly Meralco’s franchise areas—“with low-cost
electricity.”
Wiki-Solar, a part of renewable
energy consultancy WolfeWare Ltd., defines “utility-scale” as solar power
plants with a capacity of at least 4 MW.
Singson said MGen also believed
there was ongoing potential for competitive new wind-based power generation in
Luzon.
“The target we’re looking at is
hopefully at least 500 MW to 1,000 MW of solar in the next two to three years,”
he said.
“We are in discussions for a wind
project with 150 MW of capacity,” he said, adding that this was a potential
partnership on an existing wind project.
The former public works secretary
said MGen was considering to undertake solar and wind projects that were either
greenfield—to be built from scratch—or ones that were already being developed.
“We will start going through a
screening process (to choose the projects),” Singson said. “It looks like most
of the constraints are either limitations on transmission or limitations in
terms of land availability and conversion, specially if they (lands) are
covered by restrictions related to ancestral domains or agrarian reform.”
“We hope to sign off by the first quarter
of next year our first project,” Singson said.
MGen is taking such a path amid
opposition from various groups to some of the company’s pending projects,
especially coal-fired power plants.
In particular, MGen has been
awaiting regulators’ action on proposed power supply agreements (PSA) related
to several projects.
Of such projects, the most advanced
along the development process is the 1,200-MW green project being pursued by
Atimonan One Energy Inc.
Singson has reiterated that all
permits and clearances for the Atimonan project have been secured and the plant
was ready for construction, and all that was lacking was a regulator-approved
PSA.