Conergy: Sparking the Philippines' solar power revolution

Conergy: Sparking the Philippines' solar power revolution

In the southernmost tip of the Philippines, thousands of residents of
Zamboanga City are reeling from a dark past.

For six months last year, the city was hit with one of the worst periods of
brownout, the term Filipinos use for power outages, in the country in
decades. "It was about four to six hours a day in two-hour intervals,"
resident Ellen Enriquez Restor, 41, tells Eco-Business.

ENERGY

Restor, who works as a legal officer for the government's telecommunication
commission in the area, adds: "We had to schedule work that required no
power such as filing, or having meetings, for the hours when we had no
power."

Restor and her family are fortunate to have solar panels, batteries, and a
small diesel generator which they use to power their home. "Other people
bought rechargeable lanterns and lamps from stores," she shares.

"If we had children at home it would be more difficult. For families who
can't afford to buy rechargeable fans, it was handheld fans made of
cardboard or plastic just so the small children can sleep a little
comfortably."

And because brownouts were on rotation, where city officials announced
beforehand which part of the city would have power and which part wouldn't,
people had to drive through dark streets and literally see a light at the
end of it. "That meant the adjoining street is on their scheduled happy
hours. For those without, it meant quiet, humid, and mosquito-filled hours
till power comes back on again," Restor recalls.

Restor is just one of 98 million Filipinos spread out over 7,107 islands who
are plagued by perennial power outages.

Supply shortage from the country's main power generators-coal in Luzon,
geothermal in Visayas, and hydropower in Mindanao-have triggered rolling
power outages. In April this year, the energy department raised red alert
statuses for Luzon and Mindanao, which meant available power supply fell
short of demand.

On August 16, the country's senate energy committee summoned power firms to
a round of investigations for possible collusion, after 20 plants from the
Luzon grid shut down at the same time from July 26 to August 5, resulting in
three- to four-hour power interruptions in many parts of Metro Manila,
Quezon City and nearby suburbs.

The investigation is ongoing as of this time, and the power players have
shed little light on the matter, maintaining that the massive shutdown was
simply due to scheduled maintenance.

At the senate hearing, energy secretary Alfonso Cusi assured there was ample
and steady supply and that a power crisis was unlikely, although he did not
specify how long this supply will last.

While everyone seems to be grappling in the dark for answers on the current
power situation in the country, Filipinos continue to bear the brunt of
rolling brownouts. This means adjusting their lives alongside the few hours
they have electricity. For office workers, it means literally toiling by
candlelight. For businesses and key establishments, they are compelled to
de-load demand from the grid and switch on their own diesel generators to
run business as usual.

Asking businesses and key establishments to get off the grid is one of the
solutions the government thought of and implemented under the Interruptible
Load Programme to distribute power to more people at times when the supply
is low. In return, the government paid back the businesses and key
establishments, through power distribution utilities, for using their own
generator sets.

Unstable yet expensive

Energy supply is unreliable in the Philippines, and yet, Filipinos cough up
lots of money to pay for it. The country has the fourth highest electricity
rate per kilowatt hour in the world at US$0.34 per kilowatt hour.

But all hope is not lost in the Philippines, the 12th most populous nation
in the world.

Enjoying abundant sunshine for half of the year and vast tracks of cheap
undeveloped lands, the Philippines has ideal conditions to harness the power
of the sun for the people.

The question is whether it has the technology and investment capability to
do so and whether there are enabling policies in place to make the country
attractive to foreign investors.

The answer came in the form of feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable energy
generation, a policy mechanism designed to accelerate investment in RE which
the Energy Regulatory Commission approved on July 27, 2012.

The FIT gives producers of renewable energy, such as solar and wind, the
benefit of getting guaranteed compensation at a premium rate for the
electricity they generate.

Under the RE Law of 2008, the grid operator is obligated to prioritise
purchasing power from FIT-qualified power generators over other suppliers,
using a fixed price to be paid over a fixed period of time, which, in this
case, is 20 years.

According to the Philippine Department of Energy, as of August 31 886.985
MWp of solar PV capacity has been connected in the Philippines with 525.95
MWp eligible to receive the FIT, which is 26 MWp more than the government's
original target of 500 MWp.

Conergy makes inroads into the Philippines

It was amid this policy and energy demand backdrop that German solar
photovoltaic (PV) company Conergy, one of the world's largest downstream
solar companies, turned to the Philippines as its next investment market in
2013.

Within just two years from operating in the country, Conergy, along with its
local partners, completed a total of 274 MWp of solar capacity in the
Philippines, making the Southeast Asian nation its largest market in Asia
and the second largest in the world.

The electricity generated by the solar plants built by Conergy was enough to
power over 171,300 Filipino homes.

Between September 2015 to March 2016 Conergy and its partners were building
eight solar farms simultaneously across the country. Among these 8 projects
was the 50 MWp Petrosolar plant in Tarlac which was built on a 55-hectare
land in a record of four and a half months.

In the early years, Conergy was one of the leading solar energy companies in
Europe. The company eventually pursued a global growth strategy that aimed
to offer every energy consumer electricity sourced from renewable energy.
Hence the name Conergy, which means energy for the consumers.

Due to its early entrance into the Asian market since 2006 when it
established its regional headquarters in Singapore and then built its first
utility scale solar power farm in Thailand in 2009, Conergy was able to
quickly adapt to the Asian market and, in fact, observed several factors
that drove the demand for solar.

Specific to the Philippines, there was a hunger for cheaper and more
reliable alternative electricity sources as residents bear among the most
expensive electricity rate in Asia and the world.

Aside from the investor-friendly government incentives, Conergy Asia Pacific
president Alexander Lenz attributes Conergy's success in the Philippines to
the fact that the country is the fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia
in terms of GDP growth, foreign direct investment and population growth.

"These are very real drivers that will support growth in the energy sector,"
he said.

Conergy is pursuing projects with a total capacity of close to 200 MWp in
the next 18 months.

With Conergy, the Philippines is experiencing a solar power revolution.

But what happens at night when the sun is no longer shining?

Always ahead of its game, Conergy's answer to this is the solar + battery
storage plant.

On 24 August, the company announced its AU$42.5 million Lakeland Solar and
Storage (LSS) project located near Lakeland in North Queensland, Australia
which has commenced construction and has a target commissioning date of
April 2017.

While power generation from solar plants is fairly predictable, supply
fluctuations within a day are inevitable due to the intermittent nature of
solar energy, with solar production subject to the weather conditions at
site. But with the addition of a storage component, energy produced can be
stored and dispatched at night or during overcast days when solar power
generation is limited.

Once fully operational, the LSS project, which consists of a 13MW solar
array (featuring 41,440 solar panels) and a 1.4MW/5.3MWh Conergy "CHESS"
storage solution, is expected to produce over 22,600 MWh per year, enough to
power over 3,000 homes both during the day and night.

Alexander Lenz added, "It will only be a matter of time before Conergy
duplicates the same PV+storage technology we've used in Australia in the
Philippines, to enable more Filipinos to have 24x7 access to clean, safe and
reliable solar energy for their homes and businesses."

Solar farm developers and commercial building owners can build solar and
storage capacity far more economically than individual consumers. They also
have the financial muscle to support the sizeable investments required for
solar projects. These projects represent the best opportunity for solar
power to further contribute to the country's energy mix in both the short
and long term.

"We've already accomplished a lot in just two years, and yet the solar
revolution in the Philippines which we helped spark is just about to take on
greater momentum. With the help of our customers, investors and local
partners, together we can play a decisive role in limiting global warming
and make a lasting change in the country's energy landscape," Lenz
concluded.

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Ref:
http://www.eco-business.com/news/conergy-sparking-the-philippines-solar-powe
r-revolution/

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com