Philippines Allocates 1.57GW of Solar Energy in 2GW Renewable Energy Auction

The Green Energy Auction Bids Evaluation and Awards Committee (GEA-BEAC) of the Philippines' Department of Energy (DOE) has published a list of 19 winners of a recent auction to allocate 2GW of renewable energy capacity. The GEA-BEAC launched the auction in January. It had previously pre-selected 24 bidders for the procurement exercise's final phase. Overall, it allocated 1,966.4MW of renewables in the procurement exercise. About 119.1MW of the total was hydropower, 1.490.3GW was large-scale solar, 374MW was wind power, and 3.4MW was biomass.

The main winner of the auction is Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp. (SPNEC), which was awarded three PV projects with capacities of 200MW, 280MW, and 450MW, in the Luzon region. It also won a 300MW solar project in the Visayas region and a 200MW scheme on the island of Mindanao. In the Luzon region, Pavi Green Renewable Energy secured a 40.4MW PC project and Greenergy Solutions was awarded a 99.9MW project.

Source: Department of Energy

At present, the Philippines power grid covers Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, and most of the installed projects are concentrated in Luzon and Visayas. Mainly because the terrain of the two regions is relatively flat and suitable for the development of PV projects. The terrain of Mindanao is multi volcanic and faulted terrain, which is less suitable for the development of PV projects under such congenital conditions.

After the expiration of the Philippines solar Feed-in Tariff in 2016, only 134MW of solar power generation was increased from 2018 to 2020. The Philippines government began to support the deployment of renewable energy by launching competitive auctions. The Philippines Department of Energy issued the first auction notice on February 9, 2022, with a total target capacity of 2GW, which is the Green Energy Auction mentioned before. We expect that the installed PV capacity in the Philippines will have a major breakthrough in 2024, mainly thanks to the Green Energy Auction this year.

Source: Department of Energya