Solar PH prepares for 500-MW ‘solar ranch,’ large scale farms

Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings Inc. got a fresh boost via a P1-billion loan from AC Energy Corp. (Acen) to fund acquisitions of various project sites.

The Ayala group’s power generation platform said on Monday it signed last June 25 an omnibus loan and security agreement with Solar Philippines affiliate Provincia Investments Corp. for such purpose.

“The loan will be secured by a real estate mortgage over (Provincia’s) and third-party mortgagors’ title to, or rights and interests over, real assets in favor of (Acen), and a mortgage and pledge over the shareholding of (Solar Philippines) in one of its fully owned subsidiaries,” Acen said in a disclosure.

At the same time, Solar Philippines founder Leandro Leviste announced his company planned to add 500 megawatts to the country’s fleet of power generators through a “solar ranch” in Nueva Ecija, with the construction of the initial phase set to begin “in the coming months.”

Leviste said wholly owned subsidiary Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp. would first start with 225 MW.

“When we began developing this project in 2016, others didn’t believe that large-scale solar would be viable,” Leviste said in a statement. “Because we made this bet then, we now have projects ready to meet the country’s gap in power supply.”

He said the project, which would rise on a former ranch in Peñaranda town, “is representative of the rest of our pipeline of projects, which were not viable historically but are viable today with the lower cost of solar and storage.”

Solar Philippines is still exploring options on what to do with the output from Peñaranda, whether to sell through the spot market, engage in a bilateral contract with an off-taker, or both.

“This will supplement the Luzon grid’s thin reserves and help prevent the rotating outages that have affected millions of Filipinos over the past weeks,” Leviste said. INQ