The Philippine Solar and Storage Energy Alliance (PSSEA) sees 2025 to be a “banner year” for solar and storage power projects in the country even as it warned of emerging risks such as the need for human capital.
“2025 promises to be a banner year for the adoption of solar and storage in the Philippines. With the DOE announcing their commitment towards the next rounds of the Green Energy Auctions, which we see solar playing a leading role in adding supply of electricity,” PSSEA president and board member Ping Mendoza said.
“The inclusion of IRESS or integrated renewables and energy storage systems also shows the progressive evolution of our country’s energy landscape,” he said.
Mendoza said bottlenecks should be addressed to unlock the country’s huge solar potential.
He cited utility-scale solar projects that still faces limitations in grid interconnection and the difficulty in consolidating land since developing solar projects for the grid benefits from economies of scale.
Mendoza said that for distributed energy such as rooftop solar for homes and businesses, growth is held back by needing to improve the consumer buying experience and building trust in the technology and the installers and service providers.
“Introducing quality and safety standards would open up mass adoption of the lowest cost electricity technology in the Philippines,” he said.
“Permits and varying levels of support from local stakeholders could also be improved. As an example, the ERC [Energy Regulatory Commission] is establishing partnerships with LGU’s for one stop shops for net-metering applications,” Mendoza said.
He said human capital is also an emerging risk that the industry believes will need to be addressed given the limited pool of available talent.
“PSSEA has been engaging TESDA, DOE and other relevant stakeholders to highlight this matter. The increasing adoption of solar and storage technologies means that there will be huge global demand for engineers, skilled labor, project developers, and commercial talent in the Philippines and overseas,” he said.
“We must ensure that institutions recognize this to prepare the talent pipeline for the Philippines to not be left behind, or worse, have our best talents leave yet again for opportunities abroad,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mendoza said key regulations and policies are already in place that ensure the continued growth of the solar and storage industries.
“It also means that executing on these at the local level is where the real work must be done. Capacity building of local governments and communities will help RE developers move more quickly in adding supply of electricity to address our highest in the world power costs,” he said.