Meralco mulls 50-MW ground-mounted solar projects

Apart from solar rooftops, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is eyeing a portfolio of utilityscale solar projects with an initial capacity of 50 megawatts (MW), its top official said.

Meralco president Oscar Reyes said the company is looking to enter into the solar industry with 50 MW of utility-scale, or ground-mounted, solar projects soon while also working on solar rooftops as well.

“On solar, we are hopeful that we will break into the utility scale solar within a fairly short period of time. We’re also working on solar rooftop,” he said.

The company official said they are open to new and existing solar projects. For new projects, the company will be partnering with strategic partners to get started, Reyes said.

“As typical with our power generation projects, we try to partner with strategic partners so that there is someone who vets and validates the feasibility of our projects,” he said.

While he did not disclose the identity of the possible partner in solar, the Meralco official said initial discussions are ongoing with a new solar player. “We would like to make that disclosure when we are able to finalize something,” Reyes said.

Last year, Meralco said it is pursuing renewable energy ( RE) projects such as solar, wind, run- of- river and hydropower, as part of plans to diversify its power generating portfolio.

Meralco chairman Manuel Pangilinan had also said the group will be spinning off a new unit for RE investments, a separate entity from the group’s power generating unit Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen).

The entity will be called MSpectrum, which will be the main vehicle for solar rooftop and utility-scale investments.

In the next three years, Meralco is targeting to build a portfolio of up to 100 MW from solar rooftops, of which 20 MW is being looked at in the first year of operations of MSpectrum, Meralco SVP and head for customer retail services and corporate communications Alfredo Panlilio said earlier.

Meralco, through MGen, is currently building coal-fired power plants with partners totaling 3,000 MW in generating capacity.