CEBU-BASED Vivant Energy Corp. is forming a special team that would solely focus on exploring renewable energy (RE) investments to help meet the firm’s target of expanding its RE portfolio to 20 percent by 2023.
“We want to create a team that just focuses on RE. We don’t want them to be all over the place looking at small power utilities group (SPUG), retail, on-grid conventional generation so we formed a special team just to hit our RE targets,” said Vivant senior vice president for power Emil Andre Garcia in a virtual press conference on Thursday, June 17, 2021.
Vivant Corp. president Arlo A.G. Sarmiento emphasized that the firm is allocating a “large amount of resources” to meet this goal.
“It’s a real goal for us and we intend to achieve it,” said Sarmeinto.
Garcia said Vivant is earmarking an estimated P5 billion in capital expenditures (capex) for all power projects over the next three years. Of the total capex, Garcia said a large chunk will be set aside for RE projects.
Vivant has set a goal of expanding its portfolio to 500 MW by 2023 or by at least 100 MW over the next three years.
But for 2021 alone, some P3 billion in capex will be allotted for power.
This is to fund “the construction of the 15 megawatt power plant that will supply peaking power with ancillary service capability for Pampanga II Electric Cooperative Inc., the power supply agreement thereof was just recently signed. This amount also includes investments in the newly acquired solar engineering, procurement and construction company Buskowitz Finance Inc., BukidnonPower Corp. and North BukidnonPower Corp,” Vivant told the local bourse on Friday, June 18.
Moreover, Vivant is studying several sites now to expand its solar power investments.
Garcia said some of these solar projects are in Luzon and Visayas, which they hope to close negotiations on within the year. The firm is also eyeing to ground break its wind project in Eastern Visayas next year.
Besides its interest in acquiring existing solar assets, the company is also keen on hybrid-based power sources, which is combining solar and conventional types, like oil or bunker.
“We are quite comfortable with hybrid technology, which is based on diesel technology because of our experience in the SPUG market which is primarily diesel... What we like about it is that it is very easy to ‘hybridize.’ It is a very flexible technology. So combining it with battery and solar is very easy with diesel technology,’ said Sarmiento.
Solar rooftop
Vivant is also stepping up its investments in the solar rooftop power systems business with 10 to 11MW of installed capacity by the end of 2021. Another 13MW is expected to come online by 2022.
Vivant said this is in reference to the investment in Buskowitz Finance Inc. and the ongoing and future solar rooftop projects of its wholly owned subsidiary Corenergy Inc. (KOC)