Citicore eyes microgrid contract

Citicore Renewable Energy Corp. (CREC) of tycoon Edgar Saavedra is keen on participating in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) second round of bidding for microgrid systems, the company’s president said.

CREC boss Oliver Tan said Tuesday night the group was interested in the planned second auction as this involves areas that are not as “scattered” as the first.

“We participated [in the first auction] but we did not submit a bid,” Tan told reporters. “But this next one looks good because the first one is scattered so there is no scale, while [the areas in] the next round are close together.”

Over the weekend, the DOE said it would open the second round of bidding for microgrid system providers in September, covering 75 unserved areas with 12,000 households.

Based on DOE data, these unserved areas are located in Camarines Norte, Negros Occidental, Quezon, Palawan and Masbate. The agency aims at awarding the contract in early December.

The Maharlika Consortium—comprising homegrown Maharlika Clean Power Holdings Corp. and Singapore-based firms CleanGrid Partners Pte Ltd. and WEnergy Global Pte Ltd.—won in the first bidding for eight remote areas in Cebu, Quezon and Palawan.

The DOE previously said the consortium would build and operate a hybrid microgrid system composed of a solar photovoltaic system, energy storage system and a diesel generator set.

The Microgrid Systems Act of 2022 mandates the conduct of a competitive selection process before an MGSP can serve off-grid areas. It provides a 90-day timeline to complete the conduct of competitive selection process from the prequalification until the submission of the awarded contract to the Energy Regulatory Commission.

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Meanwhile, Citicore hopes to expand its solar power generation capacity to 1,300 megawatts (MW) by early next year as more facilities are expected to come online in the next few months.

Currently, it has an operating capacity of 285 MW.

“We will energize around 1 gigawatts [1,000 MW] by the end of the year to early next year, so the full impact of the power generation revenues will be felt next year … so that will make us 1.3GW, that’s almost six times this year’s capacity,” Tan said.