Wind power in Philippines: 260-megawatt wind farm in Mindanao

A corporation is eyeing a 260-megawatt (MW) wind farm to be put up in Soccsksargen region particularly in General Santos City and Sarangani Province, an official of the Department of Energy (DOE) said.

The DOE-Renewable Energy Department Director Mario Marasigan said companies are taking interest into investing in wind resource on the eastern side of Mindanao particularly Surigao until General Santos City.

A letter of interest has already been sent for Agusan-Surigao areas. He added Hangin Renewables Development Corporation is already in the stages of applying for a service contract from DOE for their 260MW project, which will be composed of three projects, the Mindanao 1 Wind Power Project, which will be put up in General Santos City, the Sarangani 1 Wind Power Project in Maasim, Sarangani and the Malungon Wind Power Project in Malungon, Sarangani. The areas that they are looking at would be eastern side of Mindanao, from up north Surigao until General Santos City. Applications for Gensan had already been submitted to us. Letters of interest had also been sent to us for the Surigao-Agusan area.” Marasigan said.

The Siargao and Camiguin already identified existing wind resource but only one to two turbines can be put up because the demand is not that huge, Marasigan said. “So now our turbines can be 3MW to 5MW. It was not viable although it’s continuously being studied,” he said. Marasigan added their office is currently issuing an average of about 890 renewable energy (RE) service contracts citing the country’s RE capacity has already reached up to 7,000MW, which was topped by almost 3,000MW since 2010. The entire Philippines has around 900MW of solar energy and 450MW of wind resource energy. “In Mindanao, we have a lot of renewable energy projects. Mostly hydropower but of course there are also biomass, solar, and geothermal. There are also those starting up and looking into the wind resource potential in Mindanao but these are still starting up,” said Marasigan, who was also a guest speaker during AboitizPower’s presentation of the restoration of their 6MW Binary 1 Geothermal plant in Sto. Tomas, Batangas last Thursday, April 27.

sunstar.com.ph