THE power industry under the Marcos administration must put up more than 8,000 megawatts (MW) of additional power generation capacity to be able to serve the projected peak demand of about 25,000 megawatts (MW) by 2028.
Of the needed additional capacity, at least 43 percent of the 8,000MW must be renewable energy (RE).
“By 2028, the peak demand in the Philippines will be around 25,000 MW up from our current 17,000 MW peak demand. To be able to meet that demand, we will have to make available more than 8,000 MW of new capacity. Under the vision of the President, 43 percent of that should at least be renewable energy,” said Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Raphael Lotilla.
The RE can also include battery energy storage system (BESS), which can store excess energy during periods of low demand and release it back into the grid when demand increases.
“That’s pure RE at this stage, but we’re looking precisely at combinations of RE and batteries where the battery storage with source from RE will also be considered as RE,” added Lotilla.
The 57 percent will come from a mix of natural gas and coal. “Remember, our coal-fired power plants, many of them are young. While some are old, many of them are young and therefore there’s still useful life ahead of them,” said Lotilla.
The possibility of utilizing ammonia as a fuel for co-firing in coal plants is also being considered. “You have some other sources that may come into line by 2028. Developments in technology are moving fast and I hope they move faster.
“There are now proposals, for example, converting the old coal-fired power plants into, not just co-firing with ammonia…But these are still being discussed. Our new technologies in the US, they can use coal-fired facilities to produce graphene and then with hydrogen as a by-product.
Let’s hope that these mature in time,” added Lotilla.
To meet the forecasted demand, there must be new investments in the power sector. Lotilla said the call for greater RE use is being intensified with policies geared towards achieving the government’s target of increasing 35 percent of RE in the power generation mix by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.
“As you know, the power and energy sector in the Philippines is in private hands. Therefore, the role of government is to support the initiatives of the private sector,” he noted.
So far, he said, the department “has approved 126 service contracts in RE in the one year of the Marcos administration. This represents around 31,000 MW. But RE, as you know, is site specific and therefore connectivity is at the core of RE. We have to connect the source to the market.”
The DOE reported that eight new generation facilities became operational from July 2022 to June 2023, increasing the country’s installed capacity by 930.8MW and dependable capacity by 801.6 MW.
Additional capacities from the uprating of existing power plants also contributed to the increase in installed capacity totaling 1,174 MW. On the other hand, the dependable capacity increased by 1,764 MW due to the return of the service of the Ilijan power plant, dependable capacity of which was considered zero since June 2022.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Independent Power Producers Association Inc. (Pippa) pledged support to the President’s declared priorities, such as the relentless pursuit of total electrification, the accelerated green energy goal, and the push for more gas exploration on a national scale.
“Pippa takes this opportunity to appreciate the unrelenting efforts of the Department of Energy that have unlocked some bottlenecks, thus making it possible to not only have new power plants, but more significantly, 126 RE contracts with a potential total capacity of 31,000MW,” it said.
It vowed to keep working “with our policy makers and regulators in helping ensure that the energy transition will include mechanisms that will assist existing industry players to make the transition.”
It sought support of the DOE and the Energy Regulatory Commission “as we undertake efforts and commit significant investments in the field of new technologies and/or fuel sources, such as energy storage, LNG [liquefied natural gas], hydrogen, ammonia, and a lot of other possibilities.”