LAOAG CITY, Apr. 22 – A visit to the wind and solar power plants in Ilocos Norte capped the four-day Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation -Expert Group on New Renewable Energy 44th Meeting (APEC-EGNRET44) held onApr. 13-16 at the Fort Ilocandia Resort Hotel here.
The expert group chaired by Dr. Chung-Hsien Chen of Chinese Taipei toured the Bangui and Burgos wind farms including the solar power plant during the last day of the APEC meeting.
The 16 members were given a briefing on the operation of the renewable energy facilities led by the NorthWind Power Development Corp. in Bangui and Energy Development Corporation (EDC) in Burgos.
The Phase I of the NorthWind power project in Bangui Bay, which was completed in 2005, consists of 15 wind turbines, each capable of producing electricity up to a maximum capacity of 1.65 MW or a total of 24.75 MW.
The Phase II was completed in 2008 with an additional five wind turbines with the same capacity bringing the total capacity to 33 MW. All 20 turbines are lined gracefully like an arc along the shoreline of Bangui Bay, facing the West Philippine Sea.
The 150MW Burgos wind farm in Ilocos Norte is the biggest wind farm in the Philippines and the first wind project nominated for the Philippine Government’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) incentive scheme.
The onshore wind farm was commissioned in November 2014 and is owned and operated by the EDC Burgos Wind Power Corporation (EBWPC), an affiliate of EDC.
The Burgos wind farm is capable of generating an approximately 370GWh of electricity a year and can feed power to more than two million households in the North Luzon Grid.
The 4.1-megawatt solar power plant started its operation in March 2015.
In an earlier interview, Director Mario Marasigan of the Philippines’ Renewable Energy Management Bureau under the Department of Energy (DOE) has disclosed that around the world, it is only in Burgos town that solar panels were built under wind turbines to simultaneously generate power.
Dr. Chen said Ilocos Norte is fit to host the APEC event noting its good potential for renewable energy.
“With all the renewable energy and solar power plant, I think the EGNRET made a good decision to hold the meeting in Ilocos Norte,” Chen said.
We are very glad that we have our meeting here” APEC Secretariat Vivian Hsieh added. (Cherry Joy C. Garma/PIA-1, Ilocos Norte)
