Alternergy lines up Rizal wind farm project

MANILA, Philippines - Alternergy Wind One Corp., a company led by former Energy Secretary Vince Perez, is building a 54-megawatt wind farm project in Brgy. Halayhayin, Pililla, Rizal.

Aside from providing much needed additional capacity to the Luzon grid, the Pililla wind farm has 27 towers and is expected to become a tourist destination for visitors to Rizal with several wind turbines already visible from Antipolo and from Laguna across Laguna Lake.

The project is supported by the Rizal provincial government and the municipality of Pililla.

Last year, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approved the construction of a dedicated 10-kilometer point-to-point interconnection line to connect to the distribution network of Manila Electric Co., which owns the distribution franchise to operate in Rizal.

The wind farm successfully interconnected last week with Meralco’’s 115-kilovolt Malaya-Caliraya-Kalayaan transmission line.

Perez said connecting to Meralco’s system was the most feasible and least cost means of dispatching power. This route also paves the way for connection without any grid constraint or congestion to the major power load of Luzon.

Alternergy Wind has recently secured a $100-million project financing from a syndicate of local commercial banks led by Banco de Oro, China Bank and Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. for the project.

 Alternergy is also said to be looking at developing other wind projects in Laguna and Occidental Mindoro in partnership with Korea East West Power, subsidiary of state-owned Korea Electric Power Co.

The new wind farm projects will be located in Cavinti, Laguna and Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro. Based on submissions to the Department of Energy, Alternergy has set the potential capacity of the Cavinti and Abra de Ilog wind project at 50 MW and 40 MW, respectively.

Aside from its portfolio of wind ventures, Alternergy is also looking at developing mini run-of-the-river hydroelectric power projects with Constellation Energy, also a renewable energy company.

These run-of-river projects have a capacity of less than 10 MW, but Alternergy said such projects are doing well in the Philippines.