Solar Philippines Nears Contracting 10 GW
The Department of Energy (DOE) has released the results of the Green Energy Auction, in which Solar Philippines (PSE: SPNEC) won 70% of all the auction’s renewable energy capacity (1380 MW out of 1967 MW) and 91% of all the solar capacity (1350 MW out of 1490 MW).
Part of this is to be sourced from the first 500 MW being developed by Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corporation (SPNEC), with the rest planned to be sourced from projects under entities that would be owned by SPNEC after its asset-for-share swap with its parent company.
These include projects with a total 1.8 GW planned capacity: the Tarlac-2 400 MW Solar Farm; the Quezon 800 MW Solar Farm; the Leyte 400 MW Solar Farm; and the GenSan 200 MW Solar Farm. Under the DOE’s terms of reference, bid capacities refer to net export and not plant gross capacities.
This brings the total capacity of substantially contracted Solar Philippines projects to over 6 GW, including the 3.5 GW solar, 4.5 GWh battery Terra Solar project, which is planned to supply Meralco 850 MW of mid-merit and has been touted as the “world’s largest solar project”; another over 200 MW of projects contracted with Meralco; and over 175 MW of already operational capacity.
The company has indicated that it has at least one more power supply offer to be disclosed. This would complete its potentially 9 TWh per year of contracted energy, which would serve as a critical mass of demand for its 10 GW of developments scheduled to commence operations mostly between 2025 to 2026. Energy that remains uncontracted may be sold into the spot market.
“When we began talking about 10 GW, many were in disbelief, because the total installed solar capacity of the Philippines last year was just over 1.1 GW. But we hope that having contracts for the majority of 10 GW has now made this plausible,” said Solar Philippines founder Leandro Leviste.
“We were fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time, developing these projects since 2016. Now we have contracted this capacity, we look forward to work with other companies and stakeholders to deliver these projects and help achieve our country’s targets for renewable energy,” Leviste added.