PETROWIND Energy Inc. (PWEI) was awarded by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) a Certificate of Compliance (COC) for its 36-megawatt (MW) Nabas Phase-1 Wind Power Project.
The COC issuance means the company has complied with all the technical, equipment, financial, organizational and manpower requirements to operate the wind farm. It also means the ERC has accepted the Department of Energy’s proposed June 10, commercial operations date for the facility. This regular COC will be amended by a COC feed-in-tariff (FiT) which will be issued later once the ERC decides on the FiT rate for the second batch of wind farms, including Nabas, Pililla and Guimaras.
The P4.5-billion facility is the single biggest investment in Aklan province and largest renewable-energy facility in Panay island, to date.
The Nabas facility, comprising 18 wind turbine generators (WTGs) made by Spanish firm Gamesa Eolica S.L. Unipersonal, started providing clean power to the Visayas grid on March 24 from eight WTGs at the start of its commissioning tests. Testing of the remaining 10 WTGs were completed on June 9.
“Since March 24, PWEI has contributed over 15,000 MW hours of electricity to the Visayas grid, making Aklan province the center of clean and renewable-energy generation in Panay island,” PWEI Executive Vice President for Operations Francisco G. Delfin Jr. said.
“As important, this ERC approval formalizes PWEI’s and our parent company’s status as a power-generation entity. PWEI looks forward to higher production of clean and renewable energy from Nabas as we enter the high wind season this third quarter of 2015,” he added.
PWEI is a joint-venture firm owned by Singapore-based CapAsia Asean Wind Holdings Cooperatief UA (40 percent), EEI Power Corp. (20 percent), and PetroGreen Energy Corp. or PGEC (40 percent). PGEC is a 90-percent-owned subsidiary of PetroEnergy Resources Corp.