Filipino firm breaks ground on country's first utility-scale PV plant with battery storage

Filipino firm breaks ground on country's first utility-scale PV plant with
battery storage

Filipino renewable energy firm Solar Philippines has started construction on
the first utility-scale solar project to be combined with battery energy
storage in the Philippines.

It will feature a lithium-ion battery for shifting energy into the early
evening and providing ancillary services to the national grid.

A Solar Philippines spokesman told Energy-Storage.News that further details
of the storage technology would be announced in May, alongside other PV
projects that would be using batteries.

The 150MW PV plant in at Concepcion, Tarlac, will also be the largest solar
project in the country to date and the first to start construction after the
government's Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) programme came to an end, under the
Duterte administration.

The spokesman said: "It aims to prove that solar is now viable in the
Philippines without the FIT, and can in fact replace much of the 10GW of
coal planned to be completed over the next five years."

The project is also the first to feature 'Made in the Philippines' solar
panels, from the newly-opened Solar Philippines 600MW solar module assembly
facility in Batangas. The factory is managed and staffed by the former team
of SunPower Philippines.

The spokesman added: "We envision [the] factory paving the way for the
Philippines to become a leader in solar manufacturing. Its first modules
will be used for our own projects, and then offered to module manufacturers
as OEM capacity.

The project is set to power the equivalent of 300,000 households once
completed by the end of 2017.

At the ground-breaking ceremony, energy secretary Alfonso Cusi said:
"Currently, the country's power demand is at 13,000MW and our supply is
barely 14,000MW, hence we need more power as well as reserve power.

"Solar power plants with reliable storage capability can be most useful in
island countries like the Philippines."

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Link to Original Article:
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/filipino-firm-breaks-ground-on-countrys
-first-utility-scale-pv-plant-with-b

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com