PHL's largest wind farm starts producing electricity

The largest wind farm in the Philippines — and in Southeast Asia — has started providing electricity to the national grid, Energy Development Corp. (EDC) said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange Friday.

EDC said its affiliate EDC Burgos Wind Power Corp. informed the Department of Energy (DOE) that its 150-megawatt (MW) Burgos Wind Project achieved successful commissioning on Nov. 5.

In October, EDC executive vice president Ernesto Pantangco said they are targeting completion of the 150-MW wind farm by end-November.

Based on DOE's guidelines, successful commissioning means that the renewable energy project “is now physically connected to the grid” and is “delivering power to the transmission system."

This drove the DOE to nominate the Burgos wind farm to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) as an eligible project under the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) system after the 87-MW Phase 1 and 63-MW Phase 2 of the project achieved the requisite 80-percent electro-mechanical completion on Sept. 25 and Oct.10.

The department will verify the successful commissioning of the project and will issue a Certificate of Endorsement for FIT eligibility to the ERC.

To date, the wind farm is the only project that has been nominated by the DOE to the ERC and is also the first project intended to be under the FIT system.

Under the FIT system, pursuant to the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, the ERC will give guaranteed payments on a fixed rate per kilowatt-hour—called FIT rates—for power producers harnessing renewable energy.

The country's largest wind project has a total of 50 large-scale Vestas V90-3.0MW wind turbines and an ancillary plant to be supplied and constructed by global wind turbine manufacturer Vestas.

The company recently closed a $315-million loan from foreign and local banks for the completion of the wind farm project. — Danessa O. Rivera/JDS, GMA News