The 200 MW Tarlac Solar Plant is currently the Philippines’ largest PV facility.

Image: Solar Philippines

Manila-based PV module manufacturer and project developer Solar Philippines has announced it will be installing, next year, over 1 GW of solar projects in the provinces of Batangas, Cavite, Nueva Ecija, and Tarlac.

“These projects are under PPAs and are apart from our projects for the announced auctions, which will still come at a later date,” the company’s CEO, Leandro Leviste said. “The capacities among these projects will be disclosed at a later date but we confirm the total for 2021 exceeds 1 GW.”

Leviste also stressed the difficulty of securing land, permits, and interconnection for these solar projects, despite their very attractive economics. “It has taken our company six years to develop our sites and now the sites have gotten to this stage, we are hopeful that in 2021 we will open the floodgates for solar in the Philippines,” he stated. “Some of these projects use modules produced by our company but not all, given the volume of these requirements.”

No more details were provided on the buyers of the electricity to be generated at the sites, nor did the company reveal more details about the PPAs.

The company said, however, that three of the projects would include the first, second, and third-largest solar projects in the Philippines to date, based on data from the Department of Energy (DOE).

Recent statistics released by the DOE showed that the country had an installed PV capacity of 1.06 GW under the country’s renewable energy law at the end of June. Most of the nation’s solar facilities were secured under the old feed-in tariff regime, auctions, and net metering programs.

The government of the Philippines is planning to introduce a Green Energy Tariff Program auction regime this year, under which it aims to allocate 2 GW of renewable energy capacity. The country plans to install 15 GW of renewables capacity by 2030.