San Miguel Corporation (SMC), Manila, Philippines, through its power arm SMC Global Power Holdings Corp., is spending $1 billion to simultaneously build 31 new battery storage facilities nationwide, Cnnphilippines.com reports.
SMC President Ramon Ang said the battery storage facilities are nearing their completion and these facilities would make renewable energy more viable for the country.
The battery storage facilities have a rated capacity of 1,000 megawatts. “Our country’s challenge with renewables is that it is intermittent, because of its nature. But with strategically located battery storage facilities, this can be mitigated and renewables can become more viable. This will help the transition to more renewable sources of energy in the future,” Ang said in a statement.
Ang added that the facilities, which will make up the company’s total committed capacity of over 1000 MW, will be located in several strategic sites from Luzon to Mindanao where power quality mitigations are needed.
“Our ongoing investment into battery energy storage facilities will greatly benefit power consumers all over the country, because this will mean that even faraway provinces or areas, can have the same stable and good quality power supply as everywhere else,” Ang said.
“This means that provinces and islands will have better and more equal opportunities for industrialization and economic growth. If previously some areas could not attract investments because of unstable or poor power supply, battery energy storage will make power supply more stable and reliable. Battery storage will significantly reduce imbalances in the grid that cause power interruptions and brownouts,” he added.
Ang explained the technology will boost flexibility of the power grid and improve power quality by removing excess power and injecting required power at strategic areas within the grid within millisecond level.
“This can even support equal-opportunity industrialization in many provinces where historically, no industrial plants would locate because of poor power quality,” he said.
The battery energy storage projects will be used as regulating reserve type of grid operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, to specifically mitigate grid frequency fluctuation and voltage issues.