Two energy companies said Wednesday they are installing met masts in their wind projects with a combined potential capacity of 100 megawatts.
Alternergy Holdings Corp. said it installed a meteorological mast on Alabat Island, Quezon province, in line with its goal to harness the northeast monsoon or “amihan” along the country’s eastern seaboard through its planned 50-megawatt Alabat wind power project.
Alternergy chief technical director Knud Hedeager said the 80-meter tall met mast, using NRG Systems of the US, a leading manufacturer of wind resource assessment technologies, would measure the wind resource in the area.
“The met mast will validate the strength and capacity of the wind resource over the next two years,” Hedeager said.
Based on the Global Wind Atlas, the project site has more than 7 meters per second average wind speed, similar to the wind resource in Rizal province, where Alternergy’s 54-MW Pililla wind farm is located.
Alternergy installed ten meteorological towers throughout Luzon and Mindoro since 2008, making it one of the leading wind power developers in the country.
“The Alabat Island is strategically chosen as a project site for our Alabat Wind Power Project. By developing a wind project in a site that bravely faces the ever-prevailing ‘amihan’ northeast monsoon from the Pacific Ocean, Alternergy aims to turn a natural resource into a reliable source of clean energy,” Alternergy chairman and former energy secretary Vince Pérez said.
Alternergy aims to develop up to 1,370 MW of additional wind, offshore wind, solar and run-of-river hydro projects in the next five years.
Meanwhile, Basic Energy Corp. said in a disclosure to the stock exchange that it also put up a met mast facility in Mabini, Batangas.
Mabini Energy Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of BSC, commenced the wind resource assessment campaign on Oct. 25 after installing and testing the meteorological mast in Mabini for its proposed 50-MW Mabini wind project.
A one-week functional test of the meteorological mast was undertaken to ensure the mast would perform according to its design intent during the period of wind resource assessment and verify the wind characteristics of the area for a potential wind power farm.
BSC said a favorable one-year period of assessment campaign would lead to the micro siting process to determine the wind turbine locations and design.
The Mabini wind power farm is expected to operate and deliver power to the grid by 2027.