THE National Power Corp. (NPC) said two of its projects intended to lessen dependence on fossil fuels will go on full swing this year.
Fernando Martin Roxas, NPC president and chief executive officer, in a message to reporters over the weekend, said the Government Procurement Policy Board has recently approved the terms of reference and customized bidding documents for pilot projects under the Accelerated Hybridization Plan (AHP).
With the AHP, the NPC will allow private sector to put up new renewable energy (RE) generation plants or facilities to supplement, augment or replace the existing capacities in the operations of the state-run firm’s Small Power Utilities Group (SPUG) diesel power plants mostly located in off-grid areas.
Roxas said the NPC also intends to start the tender for our four pilot clusters — Bicol, El Nido, Batanes and Tawi-Tawi within this month.
“We are eyeing an award contract in May this year,” he said.
NPC earlier said bidding for AHP is targeted to be under 20-year contracts wherein the state-run firm will be the offtaker and pay for the energy delivered to its switchyard, including losses.
Roxas added the AHP targets to replace about a quarter of NPC’s diesel consumption with RE sources.
“Our second priority is setting up an Alternative Fuel Supply Chain. We are starting with a pilot project for Western Mindanao. We are planning to set up a tender process during the second quarter of 2025 and planning for an award by middle of 2025,” Roxas said.
NPC said it is looking to pilot biofuels in two of its existing plants in Southern Palawan and in Western Mindanao to complete one or both within the year.
NPC said before it wants to access technology on the use of biofuel or palm oil as an alternative fuel and build a prototype bioenergy RE power plant that uses palm oil apart from developing an integrated logistical and technical system for the production of biofuel and biomass.
“We are also in the planning stages for a biomass application in Southern Luzon, which we hope to initiate early in 2026. We are eyeing multilateral funding to support these research initiatives,” Roxas said.
Roxas earlier said the current goal is to power all SPUG plants with 100 percent RE between 2028 to 2030.
Based on latest data from NPC, it supervises 274 SPUG power plants nationwide in 238 areas in 188 municipalities across 34 provinces of the country.
