Bronzeoak completes 4 solar farms

Four new solar farms with total capacity of 98 megawatts have been completed in recent weeks by Bronzeoak Philippines and its partners.

Bronzeoak said it had completed the construction and testing of the four plants, as well as their registration with the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market and was approved for power export by National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).

The first of the four plants to meet all the requirements set by the Department of Energy (DOE) and NGCP is the 18-MW solar farm in Bais City, Negros Oriental, owned by Monte Solar Energy Inc., a partnership between Bronzeoak and Ayala unit AC Energy Holdings Inc.

It is located near the Cebu-Negros undersea cable and helps meet the rapidly growing daytime power requirements of Dumaguete and Cebu, Bronzeoak said.

AC Energy president and CEO John Eric T. Francia confirmed via text message that the 18-MW solar power facility in Bais started commercial operations in the “second half of February.”

The capacity of the solar power station in Bais, Negros Oriental province, is expandable to 50 MW. The P1.3-billion solar farm which was initially targeted for completion in March 2016 occupies a land area of 213,292 square meters. It is expected to generate 24,205 megawatt hours of electricity yearly, which was sufficient to meet the power needs of 10,085 households in the region and save 14,838 tons of carbon emissions (CO2) every year.

The three other solar power plants with total capacity of 80MW are located in Negros Occidental province and started commercial operations in early March.  They are owned by Negros Island Solar Power Inc. (IslaSol), a joint venture between Bronzeoak, the Macquarie managed Philippine Investment Alliance for Infrastructure (PINAI) Fund and Dutch pension fund manager APG.

Of the three IslaSol projects, 18 MW and 14 MW are located in La Carlota City and a 48-MW facility is in the municipality of Manapla. They have met all the DOE and NGCP requirements and are currently providing daytime power to the seven million people living in Negros Occidental and Panay’s four provinces, Bronzeoak said.

This batch of projects with total capacity of 80MW is the second venture between Bronzeoak and the PINAI Fund, with their 45-MW Sacasol plant in San Carlos City having started operations in 2014.

“As required by DOE and NGCP, all four plants can be independently verified by the grid system operator as operating and exporting power from each and every one of its power generating inverters, all well before the March 15 deadline to avail of the feed-in tariff (FIT) mechanism,” Bronzeoak said earlier in a statement.