Apart from being a retail electricity supplier (RES), Mabuhay Energy Corporation (MECO) is also poised to enter the renewable energy (RE) scene with solar and hydroelectric ventures as part of its Php500 million capital expenditure (capex) for 2021.
Mabuhay Energy Chairman and CEO Sherwin Hing said that the company’s RE projects include its solar farm in Bulacan with a planned capacity of up to 20 megawatts (MW), an 18MW hydroelectric plant in Lanao Del Sur; and some embedded generation projects.
“The solar farm is through Excell Energy, our subsidiary that’s purely into solar. It’s going to be a joint venture with a company that owns the property in Bulacan. We’re eyeing groundbreaking sometime in September,” Hing said.
Hing added that MECO is currently using internal funds for the capex, but said that the company was looking into a debt-equity financing scheme after talks with investors.
For the hydro project, Mabuhay Energy is looking to acquire part of the company that already began working on the venture, adding that the project has passed the pre-construction stage and that actual development will begin “very soon.”
“Solar is going to be much faster to build and we also need to catch up based on the internal demands of MECO. We believe that solar will be initially dominate our renewables portfolio in the next three to five years, then hydro would eventually catch up,” Hing emphasized.
“We also have long-term plans of building our own power generation portfolio, so that we won’t be too dependent on power supply agreements from independent power producers,” he added.
For her part, MECO Vice President and Sales Head Jacqueline Castillo said that the firm is committed to developing and owning RE assets of up to 100MW in capacity soon.
Mabuhay Energy is currently selling some 30-40MW of capacity per month to 16 of its customers, which include Megaworld’s Metro Manila-based Richmonde Hotels and Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Foods.
Established in 2017, MECO is one of the RESs that operate under the Retail Competition and Open Access scheme, which intends to lower electricity prices by introducing competition among various players.
