The power generating plant will be the second green energy facility here. The first, which was activated last March, is the rice hull-powered plant, which is now generating 12 megawatts of electricity.
“It will generate ten megawatts of electricity,” said Joselito Blanco, chief operating officer of the Sto. Niño Photovoltaic Power Generating Plant. “It will feed to the grid of the National Grid Power Corporation,” he added.
He said this first-of-its-kind facility in Nueva Ecija will set up 42,000 quality photovoltaic cells in a 17-hectare area in Barangay Saranay, Sto. Niño III, this city. It will take in hundreds of workers here for the putting up of the facilities and their maintenance.
The establishment and operation of the plant, he said, is undertaken by the V-Mars Solar Energy Corp., a family-owned corporation put up by local businessman Mario Salvador.
“It is our response to our government’s call to help in tapping renewable energy for the increase of electric power supply,” Salvador said during the groundbreaking rites for the facility third week of December last year. “In addition to this, we will be putting up another power generating plant using biomass in nearby Lupao town,” he added.
Salvador, a former vice mayor of this city who is in palay trading and milling, called on other businessmen to rally behind the call to help tap renewable sources of energy for mitigating the effects of climate change, greenhouse gas emission, and environmental degradation.
The businessman was among the rice millers here who banded together for the formation of the San Jose City “i”-Power Corp. that put up the rice husks-powered plant. The rice husk, commonly called as ipa, is being bought by the corporation from the rice millers at P1 per kilogram.
The corporation partnered with the Union Energy Corp. owned by businessmen Lucio Co. The plant, which now feeds 10.8 MW to the NGCP, was capitalized at P1.2 billion.
Energy officials said the rice hull-powered plant here was the first biomass power project in the country to be launched after the feed-in tariff rates were approved on July 27, 2012.
Blanco said at least four more green energy plants will be set up in northern Nueva Ecija within the next two to three years that will generate at least a total 70 MW power. The plants will tap various kinds of renewable energies.
Director Mario Marasigan of the Renewable Energy Management Bureau of the Department of Energy, disclosed in his speech that a facility that will gauge the velocity of the wind in the eastern part of the province has been put up in Pantabangan town. It will determine, he said, the potentials for the tapping of wind energy for electric power generation.
He said it will provide another opportunity for the setting up of facilities for power generation in addition to the generating plants using other renewable sources.
“Our country’s commitment to the recent Conference of Parties in France is to reduce our greenhouses gasses emission by 70 percent,” Marasigan said. “Your efforts here in tapping renewable energy for power generation is certainly helping our government in subscribing to that commitment,” he added.
