Solar Philippines Seeks Offers to Reach 10-Gigawatt Target

(Bloomberg) -- Solar Philippines has submitted offers to contract most of its planned 10 gigawatts of projects, including a development touted as among the world’s largest, as the Southeast Asian nation aims to shift away from coal. 

If the offers are approved by customers and regulators, the company would potentially have 9 terrawatt-hours a year of contracted energy, enabling it to start most of the targeted capacity in 2025 and 2026, Solar Philippines said in a regulatory statement. 

The planned facilities “would help address the country’s potential power shortage” and significantly boost the nation’s grid-connected solar capacity of 1,127 megawatts at end-2021, Solar Philippines President Leandro Leviste said in the statement. The Philippines gets about 57% of its electricity from coal, burning the equivalent of 29 million tons of high quality fuel, according to data from BloombergNEF and BP Plc.

Solar Philippines is building 3.5 gigawatts of solar and 4.5 gigawatts-hours of battery storage with billionaire Enrique Razon, which it said has been described as the world’s largest solar project and would be twice the country’s existing solar capacity. Another unit is developing a 500-megawatt solar farm in Nueva Ecijia province in the north, and also has ventures with other parties including an Ayala Corp. unit.

(Corrects scale of large project in first paragraph.)

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