Solar Philippines shifting focus to rural development

MANILA, Philippines — From serving shopping malls and residents of urban areas like Metro Manila, Solar Philippines is now shifting its focus to rural development in line with its mission to provide cheap and reliable electricity to every Filipino.

Solar Philippines founder and president Leandro Leviste said the company would devote over 50 percent of its resources to areas unserved or poorly served by electric utilities.

“Inspired by President Duterte’s mission to improve the lives of Filipinos, we will do our utmost to end energy poverty in the Philippines by 2022,” he said.

“We’ve received thousands of emails from Filipinos asking for solar with batteries in provinces with expensive electricity and regular brownouts. While traditional businesses prefer to focus on larger markets like Metro Manila, we are hopeful that investing in rural areas will help uplift Filipinos from poverty, and eventually create an even larger market among the new middle class,” Leviste said.

During its recent factory inauguration, Solar Philippines unveiled to President Duterte the company’s first social impact project in Paluan, Occidental Mindoro, a town so remote it had been deemed unviable by even the electric coop.

The company is now constructing a four megawatt (MW) solar-battery farm, which will become the world’s largest island solar-battery micro-grid, and bring 24/7 power to up to 20,000 Filipinos – at zero cost to the government, and at lower cost to consumers.

It hopes this will be a model for every town in the Philippines to host its own solar-battery micro-grid, and save P20 billion a year in diesel subsidies.

Solar Philippines is in discussions with various communities to bring this model nationwide, and integrate irrigation and other initiatives to create employment in rural areas.

Earlier, Leviste said the company is actively participating in various bids for on-grid and off-grid power developments in the region.

The firm hopes to build around 200 MW of solar farms in Indonesia, Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia in 2018.

If it secures contracts to build solar farms outside the country, the solar panels will be served by its solar factory in Sto. Tomas, Batangas.

At 800-MW annual production capacity starting this year, the solar panel factory can produce solar panels more than the production capacity of the entire US.

The company plans to raise the factory’s annual capacity to 2,000 MW by mid-2018 to produce solar panels and solar cells to meet the requirements of its solar projects, of local distributors and exports to Chinese companies seeking to manufacture solar panels from Southeast Asia for export to the US and Europe, where governments imposed tariffs on solar panels made in China.

“We measure our success not based on profit, but our contribution to our nation’s development. We aspire not to be the biggest company, but the one that makes the biggest impact for Filipinos, and hope the entire power industry can unite to support President Duterte’s vision for cheaper, reliable electricity to make the Philippines a first-world nation,” Leviste said.