Solar Philippines is transforming a franch in Nueva Ecija into the country’s largest solar farm in the country and in Southeast Asia to-date with a capacity of up to 500 megawatts (MW).
Wholly owned subsidiary Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp. will initially build 225 MW of solar plant in the coming months, to be followed by the balance of up to 500 MW.
The project will be built on a former ranchland in Peñaranda, a fourth-class municipality in Nueva Ecija.
Solar Philippines founder Leandro Leviste said the company started developing the project in 2016, at a time when large-scale solar developments were thought to be unviable.
“Because we made this bet then, we now have projects ready to meet the country’s gap in power supply,” he said.
“This 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. On the other hand, if we started development only now, it would already be too late,” Leviste said.
The project’s generated capacity would be sold to the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) during the sunniest hours when demand is highest, supplementing the Luzon grid’s thin reserves and preventing the rotating outages, until the company secures an off-take contract.