The frenzy for putting up green energy plants was started by the San Jose City “i” Power Corporation (SJCIPC) here whose 21 members are all rice millers.
The SJCIPC partnered with the Union Energy Corp. owned by businessmen Lucio Co for the setting up of the rice hull-powered facility which is now generating 12 megawatts of electric power, 10.8 MW of which is being fed to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).
The plant, capitalized at P1.2 billion, is the country’s fi rst commercial biomass power plant launched after the feed-in tariff was approved in 2012. The feed-in tariff guarantees an assured market, in addition to other perks.for the renewable energy generators.
Another similar facility is being put up by the SJCIPC on its compound in Barangay Tulat here. The needed rice hull, which is about 300 tons per day, is procured by the corporation at P1 a kilogram.
Joselito Blanco, chief operating officer of the V-Mars Solar Energy Corp., said that a power plant is scheduled to be set up in Lupao town, about 15 kilometers north-west of here.
It will use bana grass to power the plant.
It will come after completion of the photovoltaic plant being put up in Sitio Saranay, Barangay Sto. Niño III here this coming mid-March, he said. The construction of the plant, he added, is fi nanced by the family corporation of businessman Mario Salvador.
Blanco said the corporation is currently growing in its nursery the planting material for bana grass to be used for a plantation in Lupao town.
“Bana grass is a hybrid derived from the annual babala (Pennisetum americanum) and the perennial Napier grass (P. purpureum),” Blanco said. “Similar to sugarcane, it grows from fi ve to seven meters,” he added.
Blanco, who was formerly with the SJCIPC when it was still being set-up, said that a rice miller here who belongs to the corporation is also planning to set up a rice hull power plant in Laur.
In nearby Talavera, the “Green Innovation for Tomorrow” (GIFT) power plant is set to operate in two to three months.
“We have already completed all the needed testing of the plant and will be activated as soon as the necessary documents are fi nalized,” plant manager Martin Oliver Vendivil said. “It was fi nanced by our family corporation with help from other investors,” he added.
The plant, which will feed 10.8 MW of electricity to the NGCP, is located in Barangay Bakal II, Talavera.
In Pantabangan town which is in the northern part of the province, two hydroelectric plants have been operating.
They are the Pantabangan Hydroelectric Plant completed in 1977 and the Pantabangan- Masiway Hydroelectric Plant with a combined output of 132.5 MW.
In the main canal of the dam in Rizal town, a mini-hydroelectric plant is about to be completed. It is capable of generating 10 MW.
Another renewable power source being looked into is wind.
“We have put up facilities in Pantabangan to determine the potential of wind for power generation,” said director Mario Marasigan of the Renewable Energy Management Bureau of the Department of Energy (DOE) during the groundbreaking rites for the photovoltaic plant here.
The potentials looked good, he said.
Marasigan said the country committed during the recent Conference of Parties in France “to reduce our greenhouses gasses emission by 70 percent,” Marasigan said.
He lauded the eff orts in Nueva Ecija, particularly in the northern part, for tapping various renewable energy sources for power generation as “it will certainly help our government in subscribing to that commitment.”
He hastened to add that by mid-March this year, the guaranteed price for green energy for the generators is pegged at P8.69 per megawatt. The investors looked at it as reason for investing in green energy plants as guaranteed profi table enterprises.
