Repower to build wind farm in Quezon

MANILA -The Tiu family’s renewable energy firm Repower Energy Development Corp. is set to construct its first wind farm in Quezon province in a bid to diversify its portfolio that currently consists of hydro power plants.

Repower, a subsidiary of businessman Dexter Tiu’s Pure Energy Holdings Corp., said it had secured the Department of Energy’s clearance to pursue a 200-megawatt (MW) wind farm that would cover two service contracts.

The first project, the Silang Maragondon Wind Farm, will sit on a 2,592-hectare (ha) piece of land, while the Pandan Labayat Wind Farm will cover 2,025 ha of land.

Both will be connected to the national grid through the Biga Switchyard Station, which is currently being utilized by three of Repower’s run-of-river hydro projects.

“This will allow us to maximize synergies in our operations and logistics, and tap into the transmission lines, switchyard, access roads and other infrastructure developments we own and are already built,” Repower president and chief executive officer Eric Peter Roxas said in a statement on Wednesday.

The facilities are Repower’s first wind projects, as its portfolio presently consists of six mini hydro power plants in the provinces of Laguna, Quezon and Camarines Sur with a combined capacity of 10.15 MW.

Repower recently inked a memorandum of agreement with Austria-based Gugler Water Turbines GMBH for the development of a 320-MW seawater-pumped storage project, the first of its kind in the country.

It has also commissioned the 5.8-MW Tibag and the 1.4-MW Lower Labayat hydro power plants, while the 15-MW Pulanai and the 4.5-MW Piapi hydro projects are currently under construction and are set to begin commercial operations in 2025.