In photo: Four of 31 Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) facilities being put up by San Miguel Corporation’s power arm, SMC Global Power Holdings Corp., located in Masinloc Zambales; Malita, Davao; Maco, Davao de Oro, and Jasaan, Misamis Oriental. The BESS facilities are currently undergoing testing and commissioning. These facilities will have a combined rated capacity of over 1,000 megawatts and will stabilize and improve power quality for users nationwide. These will also pave the way for more viable use of renewable power by addressing the issue of intermittence
By Victoria “NIKE” De Dios
As the Philippines seeking to achieve energy security and independence, the energy industry is faced with the challenge of supplying steady power to communities across the Philippines given the fact that the pandemic has been affecting all the industries everywhere.
Just like other environmentally-conscious nations, San Miguel Corporation (SMC), through its power arm SMC Global Power Holdings Corp (SGPHC), is spending over USD 1 billion to simultaneously build 31 new battery energy storage facilities nationwide, with a rated capacity of 1,000 megawatts in the Philippines.
The company completed 2018 the very first battery energy storage facility in the country in its power plant in Masinloc, Zambales. It has since embarked on a project of such historic scale using a relatively new technology capable of improving power quality throughout the grid system and facilitate the integration of renewable power sources into the country’s generation portfolio.
The technology is also a major step towards making intermittent renewable energy more viable in the country.
“Our ongoing investment into battery energy storage facilities will greatly benefit power consumers all over the country, because this will mean that even faraway provinces or areas, can have the same stable and good quality power supply as everywhere else,” said SMC president Ramon S. Ang.
“This means that provinces and islands will have better and more equal opportunities for industrialization and economic growth. If previously some areas could not attract investments because of unstable or poor power supply, battery energy storage will make power supply more stable and reliable. Battery storage will significantly reduce imbalances in the grid that cause power interruptions and brownouts,” he added.
Ang explained that the technology will boost flexibility of the country’s power grid and improve power quality by removing excess power and injecting required power at strategic areas within the grid within millisecond level.
This ensures power quality is maintained and that it reaches power users all over the country.
“This can even support equal-opportunity industrialization in many provinces where historically, no industrial plants would locate because of poor power quality,” Ang said.
On top of that, Ang said that battery energy storage facilities can facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources such as wind or solar into the grid.
It can address the inherent problem of renewables, which is intermittence, which significantly aggravates the poor quality of power in the grid.
“Our country’s challenge with renewables is that it is intermittent, because of its nature. But with strategically located battery storage facilities, this can be mitigated and renewables can become more viable. This will help the transition to more renewable sources of energy in the future,” Ang explained.
The immediate aim though, is to address power quality issues. The battery energy storage projects will be used as regulating reserve type of ancillary service for the country’s major power transmission firm, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), to specifically mitigate grid frequency fluctuation and voltage issues.
Ang said that some of its battery energy storage facilities are now in the advanced stages of completion. The facilities, which will make up the company’s total committed capacity of over 1000 MW, will be located in several strategic sites from Luzon to Mindanao where power quality mitigations are required.
