FLOATING SOLAR POWER SYSTEM EYED IN LAGUNA DE BAY

Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings is developing a pilot test of a floating photovoltaic (PV) system at the Laguna de Bay in an effort to address scarcity of available land for this renewable energy platform.

Leandro Leviste, founder and chief executive of Solar Philippines, said in an interview that his company has entered into a memorandum of agreement with the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) for this endeavor.

Leviste said the project was still in the development stage but that it was to be implemented “over the next few months.”

A success pilot test “will allow us to use bodies of water for floating solar systems instead of using any more scarce land in the Philippines,” he said.

“Our main technical concern is to prove that the floating system can withstand Philippine wind speeds especially during the typhoon season when they reach about 250 kilometers per hour,” Leviste said.

He added that floating solar PV systems were already being widely deployed in China, other parts of Southeast Asia and markets with scarce land for industrial use.

The pilot is expected to involve a 100-kilowatt setup, which Leviste said was the minimal size that they could use to have a reasonable sample set for what would hopefully be a target of 100 MWover the next two years.

“(A)fter a few quarters of [hopefully] demonstrating that it can survive this year’s typhoon season, then we hope to announce a much larger project,” Leviste said.

Also, Solar Philippines is building 10 micro-grid systems in 10 towns across the country. These are slated to go online within the next few months.

These 10 towns are spread across the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Batangas, Mindoro, Romblon, Masbate and Palawan as well as Davao City.

Leviste said this was his company’s follow up to the 2megawatt micro-grid that was launched in Paluan, Occidental Mindoro, last March.

The Paluan micro-grid is equipped with solar panels that can generate 2 MW of electricity, batteries with a capacity of 2

megawatthours, and a diesel-fired back-up generator that has a capacity of 2 MW.

“Each [of the 10 new] projects will be at the same scale as Paluan,” Leviste said in an interview. “The first two will be completed this month in Masbate, [to benefit residents] who will have 24-hour electricity for the first time in their lives.”