ACEN Corp. said Thursday it is developing two wind projects with a combined capacity of 230 megawatts in Ilocos Norte province at a cost of P17 billion following its winning bid under the Green Energy Auction Program.
ACEN’s two wind projects— the 70-megawatt Caparispisan II of unit Amihan Renewable Energy Corp. and 160-MW Balaoi and Caunayan wind projects of Bayog Wind Power Corp.—participated in the recently concluded GEAP.
“Bayog is under construction. We will start construction of Caparispisan this year,” ACEN president and chief executive Eric Francia said.
Francia said the Balaoi wind project was expected to be completed by 2023, while the Caparispisan wind project expansion would be finished by 2024 or within the 2025 deadline under the GEAP.
“For wind, those are the two projects that we’re confident will be completed by December 2025. Of course, we have other projects, but expected completion will be beyond 2025, or at least it’s too tight; we don’t want to risk it,” Francia said.
ACEN owns a 67 -percent economic stake in the 81-MW Caparispisan wind project in Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte of project company North Luzon Renewables Corp. ACEN’s partners in NLRC are UPC Renewables and Diamond Generating Asia Ltd., an affiliate of Mitsubishi Corp.
Francia said ACEN would participate in the next GEAP with other projects.
“By our estimation, the Philippines would need more than 2 gigawatts of renewables every year for the next decade. We need close to 20 GW of renewables, if we are to achieve the 35-percent RE share and also address the demand growth,” Francia said.
Francia said the company did not offer a bid for the solar capacity offered under GEAP.
“[For] solar, we struggled to get the economics right, especially because the capex increased, forex and interest rates as well. We think that the wind GEAR price is okay. It’s significantly higher than solar, so there’s more room. Plus, our projects have a good capacity factor,” he said.
The Energy Regulatory Commission set the Green Energy Auction Reserve for the auction at P3.6779 per kilowatt-hour for solar and P6.0584 per kWh for wind.
ACEN, the listed energy platform of the Ayala Group, continues to expand its operations in the Philippines and abroad. The company has about 3,800 MW of attributable capacity in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Australia.
ACEN aims to be the largest listed renewables platform in Southeast Asia. It expects to have 5,000 MW of renewable capacity ahead of its 2025 target.