Additional wind energy capacities are expected to be developed in the country after two companies completed the installation of meteorological (met) masts.
The equipment is used to record wind speed in an area to estimate the amount of energy that can be produced and to determine whether turbines can safely operate.
Alternergy Holdings Corp. installed a met mast on Alabat Island in Quezon province as part of its plans to harness the northeast monsoon wind along the country’s eastern seaboard.
Knud Hedeager, Alternergy chief technical director, said in a statement the 80-meter-tall met mast will validate the strength and capacity of the wind resource over the next two years.
Alternergy said based on the Global Wind Atlas, the Alabat project site has more than 7 meters per second average wind speed, which is similar to the wind resource in Rizal province where the company’s 54 megawatts (MW) Pililla wind farm is located.
The Alabat wind power project, with a proposed capacity of up to 50 MW, is one of the wind power projects being developed by Alternergy, which aims to develop up to 1,370 MW of additional wind, offshore wind, solar and run-of-river hydro projects in the next five years.
Meanwhile, Basic Energy Corp. said its wholly owned subsidiary, Mabini Energy Corp., also installed a met mast facility on Tuesday in Mabini, Batangas, for its potential 50 MW Mabini wind energy project.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the company said a favorable one-year period of assessment campaign will lead to the micro siting process to determine the wind turbine locations as well as its design.
Afterwards, the wind power farm is expected to operate and deliver power to the grid sometime in 2027, Basic Energy added.
Based on data from the Department of Energy, as of August 2022, the country’s total installed wind power capacity is at 443 MW, equivalent to 1.6 percent of the total 27,789 MW installed power capacity for the period.
