Power firm forms team to explore RE prospects

CEBU, Philippines —  Cebu-based Vivant Energy Corporation is catching up in expanding its Renewable Energy (RE) portfolio with the creation of a special team, which will focus on exploring RE investments.

During a virtual press conference held Thursday June 17, 2021, following the company’s Annual Stockholders’ Meeting, Vivant Corporation president Arlo A.G. Sarmiento, bared the company’s serious stance in reaching at least 20 percent of its total energy portfolio that will account for RE by 2023.

Sarmiento said Vivant would not want them to be all over the place looking at Small Power Utilities Group (SPUG), looking at on-grid conventional generation and retail, “we had formed a special team just to meet our RE target.”

The new RE Team will look for retail and other RE resources to hit the target, and this move will be well supported by good amount of fresh capital at P3 billion for RE related projects.

Overall, Vivant Energy is allocating P5 billion capital expenditure over the bext three years, P3 billion of this will be used for RE initiatives, said Emil Andre M. Garcia, executive vice president and COO of Vivant Energy.

While the company is pushing to explore more RE resources, with negotiations of wind and solar power generating plants, it is also looking at other conventional energy sources, bunker/oil fueled plants, Sarmiento added.

“We are comfortable with hybrid-based sources,” Sarmiento said explaining that the company will generate power from “hybridize”, a flexible technology that combines RE and conventional technology-leaning power sources.

The Garcia controlled power company, is currently leveraging its lead in the solar rooftop space with 10 to 11 megawatts (MW) of capacity by the end of 2021.

Another 13MW will be added to its solar rooftop capacity by 2022.

Last year in 2020, the company only incurred P500 million to P1 billion capex, while the country was raging war against the pandemic.

In 2021 however, the company is keeping its hopes high because of the evident opening up of the economy. “We are grabbing the opportunity.”

Vivant Energy ended 2020 with total equitized earnings of P1.85 billion a 29 percent down from P2.6 billion recorded in 2019.