Solar power plant links to Luzon grid

Petroenergy Resources Corp. said one of its units was set to supply electricity to the Luzon grid through the 50.07- megawatt (MW) Tarlac solar power project.

The publicly listed company said the facility had been synchronized to the Luzon grid and started delivery of power at 4:10 p.m. on Jan. 27 as part of its on-going commissioning tests.

The solar project is owned by PetroSolar Corp., a joint venture firm of PetroGreen Energy Corp. (56 percent) and EEI Power Corp. (44 percent).

PetroSolar said the energy facility covered 55 hectares of industrial land within the Peza-registered Central Technopark in Tarlac City.

PetroGreen Energy Corp. (PGEC), the renewable energy subsidiary of publicly listed PetroEnergy, is also part owner of the 20-MW Maibarara-1 geothermal facility in Sto. Tomas, Batangas and the 36 MW Nabas-1 wind power plant in Nabas, Aklan.

“PetroSolar’s 50-MW Tarlac solar farm is the largest single solar power facility completed in the country to-date,” PetroSolar president Milagros V. Reyes said.

The Department of Energy (DOE) validated the completion of 80 percent of the solar farm’s electro-mechanical components and 100 percent of its interconnection facilities on Dec. 23, 2015 and issued the nomination for Feed-in-Tariff eligibility on Jan. 19.

FIT is an incentive scheme set up by the government to encourage renewable energy development by promising fixed power rates to eligible developers.
PetroSolar was issued the service contract for the Tarlac solar project by the DOE on March 19, 2015 and secured its declaration of commerciality on Sept. 24, 2015.

PetroGreen vice president and COO Francisco G. Delfin Jr. said that although the company was a “late entrant” to solar energy development, having signed its supply and construction contracts only in mid-June 2015, it was still able to complete a project of such scale in a short time.

“As important, given that only about 132 MW of solar projects out of the 500-MW allocation have been awarded the P8.69 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) solar FIT rate, our milestone today once validated by DOE and ERC gives PetroSolar a very high chance of securing our 50-MW FIT allocation,” Delfin said.