THE Provincial Government of Davao Oriental signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with Dy Green Energy for the development of the province’s first 50-megawatt (MW) solar power plant on Saturday, September 16.

In a Facebook post by the Provincial Government of Davao Oriental, Governor Niño Sotero L. Uy, Jr. and Dy Green Energy Operation Manager King Shing Donny Yeung signed the MOA for the state-of-the-art 50-megawatt solar power generation plant that will be situated at the 40-hectare land in Barangay Maputi, Banaybanay Municipality. The land used will be leased to the company for 15 years. 

Aside from addressing the province’s power outages and rising energy demands, this historic initiative will generate employment, encourage financial investment, and increase tourism in the province. 

Through a Power Supply Agreement, the plant will also provide electricity to the Davao Oriental Electric Cooperative (Doreco), assisting in the delivery of clean energy to thousands of local households and businesses. 

Director of the Renewable Energy Management Bureau of the Department of Energy lawyer Marissa P. Cerezo applauded the move of the provincial government to promote the use of renewable energy. She expressed her enthusiasm for helping this project in terms of processing the necessary documents for the implementation of this initiative. 

“We are very happy that renewable energy resources are becoming very attractive to our investors in this country and we promote more renewable energy as we see problems in electricity rising considering we have a lot of indigenous resources. We wish that more of these renewable energies will be put up,” Cerezo said.

Meanwhile, Uy emphasized how beneficial this project would be. He added that the MOA signing is a symbol of hope for the people since this will contribute highly to the economic growth of the province. He said that through this project they can proceed with the plans that he has for the future of Davao Oriental.

“This is a positive and welcome development for all of us here in Davao Oriental, especially since we have been experiencing problems with electricity and power supply. And I think this is a very important undertaking that we have today because we cannot proceed in our development efforts, especially our socio-economic initiatives if we have problems in our power supply,” Uy said. 

As both sides stressed their determination to expedite the project’s execution, it is expected that as soon as the land purchase is finished and the business has secured the necessary operating licenses, the solar power plant will be constructed immediately. RGP