Alternergy draws out plan for 80-MW Laguna wind farm

MANILA, Philippines – Alternergy Philippine Holdings Corp. is drawing up plans for an 80-megawatt (MW) wind farm in the Sembrano mountain range in Laguna province, which is adjacent to its existing wind project in Rizal.

The new wind power facility will be an expansion of the 54-MW Pililla wind farm and is eyed under the third round of Feed-in Tariff (FIT) for wind, Alternergy Philippine Holdings Corp. executive vice president and COO Knud Hedeager said on the sidelines of the Nordic Business Council Philippines (NBCP) Renewable Energy Seminar yesterday.

“Right now, we are working hard doing the second part of the Rizal project which is the Sembrano project. It’s an 80-MW project and we hope that as soon as government announces a third Feed-in Tariff allocation, then we can put the shovel on the ground,” he said.

The National Renewable Energy Board (NREB), advisory body tasked with the effective implementation of renewable energy projects in the country, has already submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE)  higher installation targets and lower rates for the third round of FIT for solar and wind.

Hedeager said the new project will have 25 wind turbines, against the 27-tower Pililia, but will have a bigger capacity raging between 3.2 to 3.4 MW per turbine.

While plans are not yet final, the Sembrano project is expected to have a lower cost per MW of about 15 percent compared with the Pililia since prices of the technology have gone down in the past two to three years, he said.

“For the Pililla project… all in cost is $145 million. We are looking at a lower cost per MW. For Sembrano, we are looking at 80 MW whereas Pililla is 54 MW but obviously the investments would be more on the range of $180 million all in but we are not finished yet. There are still lands to be acquired, there are still contracts to be signed,” the company official said.

Headeager said 30 percent of the estimated project cost will be through equity while 70 percent will be debt.

“We talked with the banks who are our partners from the first project and they have expressed interest of partaking in the next and we are happy about that,” he said.

The Sembrano project will also be harnessing better wind resource than in Pililia, Hedeager said.

 “The other thing is because the wind resource in Sembrano is better than on our previous project meaning that the capex is the same. If you have a good wind [resource], you’ll produce more and hence, the cost of energy will go down,” he said.

The Sembrano project will take at least 18 months to finish since the area is not as accessible as in the Pililia wind farm, which only took about a year to finish, Hedeager said.

Alternergy has already tendered the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract and is expected “to sign the contract anytime soon,” he said.