Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI), through its retail electricity supplier (RES) unit, is sourcing clean power from geothermal facilities under the Department of Energy’s (DOE) green energy option program (GEOP).
Based on a BusinessWorld report, ALI subsidiary DirectPower Service, Inc. will be getting 360 megawatts (MW) from AP Renewables’ Tiwi and Makban geothermal plants, according to the DOE’s Renewable Energy Management Bureau (DOE-REMB). AP Renewables is the renewable energy (RE) arm of Aboitiz Power Corporation.
Tiwi has a total capacity of 234MW, while Makban has 448.8MW. DirectPower will specifically source 130MW from Tiwi and 230 from Makban for its GEOP customers.
The DOE recently named DirectPower as the 13th RES to join the GEOP. It is also the second Ayala firm to take part in the program after AC Energy.
As a RES, DirectPower currently supplies the requirements of 45 contestable consumers or those whose consumption is sufficient enough to allow them to choose power providers.
DOE-REMB said DirectPower received its operating permit, which was approved and signed by Energy Sec. Alfonso Cusi on Sunday.
Launched in 2018, the GEOP complies with Section 9 of Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008. It acts as a voluntary mechanism that allows contestable consumers to source their power supply from qualified RESs that source electricity from RE.
Aboitiz Power Corporation leads the list of GEOP participants with five, namely: Aboitiz Energy Solutions, Adventenergy, Inc., Prism Energy, SN Aboitiz Power (SNAP)-Magat, and SNAP-RES.Other participants also include Lopez-owned Bacman Geothermal, Inc. and First Gen Energy Solutions, Citicore Energy Solutions, Inc., Shell Energy Philippines, and Sparc-Solar Powered Agri-Rural Communities Corporation.