SOLAR Philippines is set to construct a 500-megawatt (MW) solar farm in Nueva Ecija.Through its subsidiary Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp., the company plans to build the first phase of the project which is expected to produce 225 MW.It will be followed by the 500-MW solar project in the municipality of Peñaranda. The project will be the biggest in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.The solar project's output can be sold to the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market during the sunniest hours when demand is highest.'This will supplement Luzon grid's thin reserves, and help prevent the rotating outages that have affected millions of Filipinos over the past weeks,' the firm said in a statement.The project is expected to create over 5000 jobs during construction and over 500 jobs during operations, in support of government efforts to create opportunities in the countryside.'When we began developing this project in 2016, others didn't believe that large-scale solar would be viable. Because we made this bet then, we now have projects ready to meet the country's gap in power supply,' said Solar Philippines founder Leandro Leviste.'This is representative of the rest of our pipeline of projects, which were not viable historically, but are viable today with the lower cost of solar and storage. On the other hand, if we started development only now, it would already be too late,' he added.Solar Philippines was founded in 2013 to accelerate the adoption of solar energy in the country.Since then, the company has developed a pipeline of over 10 gigawatts (GW), citing data from the Department of Energy.Previously, the company disclosed it is developing projects with a total capacity of over 1 GW this year, which will rise in the provinces of Batangas, Cavite, Nueva Ecija, and Tarlac.To accelerate the development of various solar projects, Solar Philippines shifted its strategy from competing with others in the power industry to collaborating with several local and foreign conglomerates.
