MGen eyes Indonesia RE project

MANILA, Philippines — Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen), the power generation arm of Manila Electric Co., is looking at putting up a solar-battery project in Indonesia, the output of which will be exported to Singapore.

“We are right now looking into hopefully exporting renewable energy from Indonesia to Singapore because we have a Singapore plant. This one is renewable. Solar-battery in Indonesia exporting power to Singapore,” MGen president and CEO Jaime Azurin said.

“Singapore, there’s not much land there. There’s so much land on the Indonesian side and there are many islands there,” he said.

While the plan is still in the early stages, Azurin said the capacity of the plant should be more than 300 megawatts (MW) given the sizeable investments needed for the submarine cables that will be used to export the power.

He said the plant would be owned by  PacificLight Power Pte. Ltd. in partnership with an Indonesian company.

“We have been trying to develop that for the past year, and hopefully within the year something will come out of it,” Azurin said.

The MGen official, however, said the project is a “difficult challenge” given the permits and process involved.

“Hopefully, we will be able to get the export permit from the Indonesian government. It is very meticulous because you are passing through cross border,” Azurin said.

“So when you lay down the cable going to Singapore, there are a lot of issues there. The most difficult part is the permit from the Indonesian government to export because not all governments would agree to export their power,” he said.

MGen currently has a total power generation capacity of over 2,200 MW in the Philippines and in Singapore.

The company currently has combined direct and indirect interest of 58 percent in PacificLight, which operates an 800-MW liquefied natural gas facility in Jurong Island, Singapore.

In the Philippines, MGen, through wholly owned renewable energy unit MGen Renewable Energy Inc., is working to build 1,500 MW of renewable energy projects in the next five years.

“We would like to build our capacity first locally for the Philippines and we would look at opportunities outside, in Southeast Asia,” Azurin said.

“Once we reach maybe a gigawatt or so, at least we can honestly say to ourselves we’ve taken part in sustainability objectives of the country and then we will start doing outside. But we are preparing already for the outside,” he said.