SP New Energy Corp. on Thursday bared plans to break ground this year at its Nueva Ecija solar facility in the province.
The facility is recipient of the bulk of proceeds from its capital-raising exercises, including Metro Pacific Investment Corp.’s initial P2 billion investment.
The Nueva Ecija solar facility is rated one of the world’s largest controlled by SPNEC.
“We have ongoing discussions on shareholding arrangements in certain of our projects, to find solutions that will benefit all parties. Out of deference for these discussions and respect to our partners, we will not yet elaborate other than to say that: We believe that it is in SPNEC’s interest to invest in projects where it has a controlling stake, and that SPNEC is best served by allocating its capital to projects where this is the case,” Solar Philippines founder Leandro Leviste said at the company’s stockholders’ meeting.
The Nueva Ecija expansion project extends over 3,000 hectares, excluding an area of over 350 hectares that house the solar power plant.
Solar Philippines has been consolidating land and permits for the project since 2016 when it sought its first solar energy service contract from the Department of Energy.
The clustering in the same area supports the development of transmission extending over 60 kilometers to connect to National Grid Corp. of the Philippines’ substations that supply the greater Manila area.
With 4 gigawatts of solar farms at development, the combined development in the Nueva Ecija area surpass the capacity of India’s Bhadla Solar Farm, currently the world’s largest farm at over 2.2 GW. It will also surpass the capacity of the total grid-connected solar operating in the Philippines as of the end of 2022 at some 1.4 GW.
