Meralco digs deeper into renewable energy

MANILA, Philippines - Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, is actively pursuing renewable energy (RE) projects as part of plans to diversify its power generating portfolio.

Meralco president Oscar S. Reyes said they are in discussions with developers of RE projects which include solar, wind, run-of-river, other hyro projects and gas.

“We have various talks on project proponents with wind, solar, on run-of-river, other hydro projects and potentially on gas,” he said.

“These are the things that we are looking at because we do not want to be a one fuel generator, we would like to spread the risks from different types of plants,” he added.

Last July, Meralco chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan bared plans of spinning off new unit for RE investments, a separate entity from the group’s power generating unit Meralco Powergen Corp. (MGen).

MGen is building a portfolio of up to 3,000 megawatts (MW) of new power capacity, mainly from baseload power plants, to address the growing energy demand in the country.

Meralco will initially target solar, particularly solar rooftops, in its thrust in the RE sector, Pangilinan said. “Not just utility grade solar but we will start probably with rooftops,” he said.

Solar-powered rooftops are seen as a big threat to the distribution business of Meralco, which counts over 5.7 million customers within its franchise area.

Pangilinan noted entering the solar market will allow Meralco to disrupt its own business, a more preferable scenario than other companies doing so.

“We think of it as a future threat so we will be the first to disrupt ourselves because if we don’t do it, others will do it for us. So rather than have somebody kill us, we might as well kill ourselves because it will be more fun,” he explained.