Manila Bulletin: Mabuhay Energy mulls 200MW RE projects

Industry newcomer Mabuhay Energy Corporation (MECO) is firming up the investment cost for its planned rollout of 200 megawatts of pure-renewable energy (RE) developments for implementation over several years.

In an interview with Mabuhay Energy CEO Sherwin G. Hing, he indicated that the initial project development will be 50MW utility-scale solar farm facility that will be sited in the Luzon grid.

“Part of the projects in the pipeline, we want to ramp up our capacity initially with 50 megawatts, and then in the next couple of years, it will be 200MW,” he said.

Hing emphasized that the targeted construction of the first plant will be around fourth quarter this year, “depending on how fast we can move — on permitting, land acquisition — so those are the things that we’re really expediting right now. And target is Q4 by this year, we can start the project as the first phase, out of the 200MW.”

He qualified that the company will hold on fast to a “risk averse” and prudent approaches on energy investing, hence, it will be pursuing its planned projects on phased developments.

“We intend to do our pilot project this year; and then every year, we intend to roll out more and more until we hit the 200MW…at the end of the day, we don’t want to be too aggressive; that’s partly because Mabuhay Energy Group is quite new in this industry,” Hing noted.

He stated that while initial developments will be on the solar photovoltaic (PV) space, the company is also keen on giving other technologies a shot on Mabuhay Energy’s future ventures, including those on hydro and wind farm installations.

Another sphere in the restructured power sector that Mabuhay Energy has been vigorously getting its hands on is the business paradigm under the retail competition and open access (RCOA) policy and that is done via its subsidiary Excell Energy and Powergen Corporation (EEPC), a retail electricity supplier (RES) licensed by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Although Excell Energy had just started its operations in 2019, it already cornered a number of impressive commercial and industrial (C&I) clients under its portfolio – including Anflo Industrial Estate, Gama Foods Corporation, N&G Realty & Development Corp., Hi-Precision Diagnostics and Yamaha Motor Philippines.

The company chief executive specified that they are currently procuring power supply from other generation companies, but they will be transforming that business game plan by pursuing “backward integration”.

Such strategy, he explained, would entail that since demand is already established in its RES business unit, then the supply needed by customers will have to be significantly augmented by the RE projects under power generation arm Mabuhay Energy.

“We decided to do backward integration – we came up with the demand first; and then, we’ll put up our own capacity. So unlike most of the companies wherein they put up their capacity first, then they look for demand; we are doing it the other way around mainly because we’re quite new in the industry,” he stressed.

Since the domestic power industry, especially Luzon grid, is now afflicted with tight supply predicaments, Hing said “We feel that the time is just good for us to enter power generation.”

“We’re looking at 200MW because the target of Mabuhay Group RES is 500MW, so 40-percent is 200MW, that’s the target portfolio.”