AES to build 1st battery storage facility in Philippines

AES Philippines Power Partners Co., the local subsidiary of US energy giant AES Corp., is planning to put up 40-megawatt battery storage in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental, the first such project of its kind in the Philippines.

According to the Department of Energy, the US firm subsidiary’s battery storage project is among the list of indicative power projects for the Visayas grid, which is expected to come online by March 2015.

Some indicative projects are on the preliminary and exploratory stage.

“They (AES) have a proposal to NGCP (National Grid Corp. of the Philippines) as ancillary services provider,” said Department of Energy Director Mylene Capongcol.

It will undertake the project through subsidiary AES Energy Storage, which is engaged in the business of commercial energy storage. This allows customers to unlock value from existing power infrastructure by liberating reserve capacity, enabling renewable facilities to generate new revenue streams, improving flexibility and reliability of the power system, and meeting peak power demand.

In the Philippines, AES is working on the $1.1-billion, 600-MW expansion of its existing Masinloc coal plant in Zambales. The company hopes to start construction by Q2 2014.

The target commissioning of the plant is in Q3 2017.