Belgian company promotes solar solutions for industries
Belgian firm UpGrade Energy has partnered with PhilCarbon, a Philippine renewable energy company to create the UpGrade Energy Philippines (UGEP), to provide companies and industries with solar power alternative.
UGEP chief country representative Edgar Hao said that the company will install, provide solar panels to firms or even individual power users without upfront payment for the solar panels, or zeroinvestment scheme for solar roof system and solar farms.
UGEP will install, manage, and maintain the solar system of its commercial and industrial clients, charging on perkilowatt-consumption of at least 10 percent lower than the prevailing rate charged by electric utilities.
"With the scarcity of power in most parts in the Philippines, there is a surge of interest on solar power resources. The original impression that solar panels are expensive no longer holds true as the cost of solar panels has dropped by 80 percent since 2008," said Hao.
Hao said solar energy’s time may be at hand. Prices have fallen so low that, in some countries, electricity from the sun can now compete with those generated by fossil fuels.
In the Philippines, with the looming power shortage issues, and frequent brownouts in some areas, the need for alternative source of power such as solar, is imperative.
In fact, some residential and commercial users have already installed solar panels in their homes and business buildings.
For a thousand square-meter roof area or solar farm area, it can produce at least 215 kilowatt power a day.
Currently the company is talking with hospitals, BPO companies, commercial establishments for solar energy alternative installations, management and maintenance, in order to cut cost, as the consumers now are cutting energy consumption from traditional source, embracing the "greener" operation and lifestyle.
"Solar power remains in the supplementary role, as it provides power only in daytime unless expensive batteries are used as storage.
“Another concern is on the investment cost of setting up a solar power system, although solar power proponents estimate that ROI can be as early as 5-7 years, there are still doubts on investing in solar energy," said Hao.
Given this, UGEP will finance the infrastructure and installation, insure the entire system (replace anything that is damaged), in charge of operations and management and replacement of inverters.
The bottom line is not only savings on electricity bills.
"This solar roof system which is in itself a personal power house will also come in handy during outages, a constant problem in the power-starved city. But more than anything is to give a share in protecting our environment by harnessing the sun’s unlimited resources to give us clean energy," Hao said.
UpGrade Energy is an engineering group specialized in the development, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of clean energy solutions for industrial, agricultural and rural applications.
PhilCarbon, on the other hand, is a Philippine renewable energy company focused on the development of clean sources of power from natural resources such as solar and wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal. It also provides a full-cycle and integrative service from project conceptualization, formulation of project feasibility study, project finance packaging, strategy formulation in the development of renewable energy sources for power generation as well as the related transaction documentation.