The Philippine Solar Power Alliance (PSPA) is looking at partnering with real estate developers and make available solar photovoltaic (PV) rooftop panels in their new projects, Tetchi Cruz-Capellan, the group founding president, told reporters on Wednesday.
“As we enter 2013, we would like to focus on solar rooftops because we believe that this is going to be a major initiative by the industry in providing solutions to our problems in the energy sector,” she said at the German Solar Training Week.
Capellan said there is about half-a-million new homes being constructed every year.
“If 10 percent of that can be converted to have solar PV panels in their rooftops, then that would a big help to the distribution utility in reducing their investments in transmission line and generation,” she said.
Capellan said solar rooftop installations can also help reduce the country’s fuel imports.
She said her group is in talks with real-estate developers who can eventually offer housing units with or without solar PV rooftop installations.
“The developers are receptive to the idea. However, what needs to be done is to have a test project before the others could begin to follow,” she said.
Capellan said they are in talks with developers like Ayala Land Inc., among others.
Quoting a National Statistics Office survey, Capellan said 10 percent of an average household family expenditure is allotted for power and water expenses.
She said families can reduce their consumption and increase disposable income with solar PV panel rooftops.
Martial Beck, Vice President of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, said the country has a lot more than the 1,500 megawatts the Department of Energy (DOE) has targeted for 2030 under its energy plan.
“One of the advantages of implementing solar power and promoting power is that it creates jobs like what we saw in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were created because of the implementation of solar power and this will happen in the Philippines as well,” Beck said.
He said solar energy has attracted investments in other countries.
Beck said a strong policy on solar power will definitely give a statement to the world that the Philippines is implementing the policies that it has set forth. Solar power will promote more environment-friendly sources of energy.
Beck said there is no doubt that solar energy is the future, and that they hope that the Philippine government will also take the additional steps to give us as soon as possible the rules for the implementation of the feed-in tariff (FIT).
Organized by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmBH and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi), the German Solar Training Week is one of the most comprehensive capacity building exercises on solar energy, specifically on solar roof tops, in the Philippines to engage stakeholders in private and public sectors of the solar market.
The Philippines is one of the countries that has yet to experience the benefits of solar energy given the abundance of sun in the country.
Harnessing solar power in the country only promises to deliver positive results that include having a secure-significant power supply in the country, it’s a viable solution to energy woes, serves as a cost-effective and affordable source of energy, it holds the potential to create jobs, improve community productivity and attract investment as its development and use are pushed forward, and lastly, solar energy inflicts no damage to the environment.
GIZ has been involved in the development of renewable energy in the Philippines since the 1990s. The German Solar Training Week is among the activities under the Project Development Program.
Since April 2011, the program has completed the activities that include, the German Solar Business Trip, workshops with PEPOA, PSPA and other stakeholders, participation at various conferences and exhibitions, and the development of the policy brief “It’s more sun in the Philippines.”
Source: Business Mirror; Second Front page; 3 October 2012
