By Lenie Lectura
PetroSolar Corp. said on Thursday it has fired up its 50-megawatt (MW) solar-power project in Tarlac City.
The solar-power project owned by PetroGreen Energy Corp. (PGEC) (56 percent) and EEI Power Corp. (44 percent) started delivering power in the Luzon grid on Wednesday at 4:10 p.m., as part of its ongoing commissioning tests.
The energy facility covers 55 hectares of industrial land within the Philippine Economic Zone Authority(Peza)-registered Central Technopark in Tarlac City.
“PetroSolar’s 50-MW Tarlac solar farm is the largest single solar-power facility completed in the country to date. The Department of Energy [DOE] validated completion of 80 percent of our solar farm’s electro-mechanical components and 100 percent of our interconnection facilities on December 23, 2015 and issued our nomination for FiT [feed-in tariff] eligibility on January 19, 2016,” PetroSolar President Milagros Reyes said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.
The DOE and Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) will validate the results of the power facility’s grid synchronization and commissioning tests, which the company intends to complete in a few days.
The DOE issued PetroSolar’s service contract for the Tarlac solar project in March last year. The project secured its declaration of commerciality on September 24, 2015.
PetroSolar engaged several parties for the project, including Syntegra Solar as owner’s engineer; German firm Conergy for the solar farm design, supply and delivery of solar panels and related equipment; and local companies such as Media Construction for initial site civil works; Phesco Inc. for solar-farm construction; and Philcantech Enterprises for the substation and transmission lines.
“Although we were a late entrant to solar-energy development, having signed our supply and construction contracts only in mid-June 2015, our completion of the project of this scale in such timeline owes not only to the tight collaboration between our team and subcontractors, but also to the professional cooperation we have received from agencies such as the DOE, the DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resources], NGCP [National Grid Corp. of the Philippines], the PEMC [Philippine Electricity Market Corp.] and Peza,” PGEC Vice President and COO F.G. Delfin Jr. said.
“As important, given that only about 132 MW of solar projects out of the 500-MW allocation have been awarded the P8.69/kilowatt-hour solar FiT rate, our milestone today once validated by the DOE and the ERC gives PetroSolar a very high chance of securing our 50-MW FiT allocation,” Delfin added. PGEC, the renewable-energy subsidiary of publicly listed PetroEnergy Resources Corp., is also part owner of the 20-MW Maibarara-1 geothermal facility in Santo Tomas, Batangas, and the 36-MW Nabas-1 wind power plant in Nabas, Aklan.