The Mindanao region is now at an electricity supply surplus level and is looking to sustain the development of power resources with renewable energy (RE) after 2020, a Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) official said.
The surplus follows the entry of baseload plants – including coal-fired facilities that went online this year and will continue in 2017 and 2018, MinDA deputy executive director Romeo Montenegro told The Philippine Star.
“With the entry of specific investments in industry, manufacturing and services sector that are very much hungry for energy, we can comfortably say now that Mindanao is able to address requirements of these investments,” he said.
By then, the region would have a 70 – 30 energy mix dominated by fossil fuel.
MinDA is targeting to accelerate the deployment of RE projects in the region to meet a 50-50 energy mix by 2030.
“We’re looking at assisting big ones that are currently on several phases of application…plus other small ones,” Montenegro said.
These projects include a 250 MW Agus 3 hydropower plant and 300 MW Pulangi 5 hydropower plant.
“These two capacities already has combined 550 MW cheaper source of capacity,” Montenegro added.
Meanwhile, the development authority is looking at 280 project applications – half of which are run – of – river projects with 2.5 MW to 80 MW in capacity.
Mindanao has a geographical advantage with numerous rivers, the reason why many RE projects are run – of – river hydro plants. However, these plants are prone to be affected by climate change, Montenegro said.
“We need to look at the viability of other technologies such as biomass and solar to complement the run-of-river set up since this cannot serve for 24 hours,” he said.