Changes including allowing full foreign ownership of renewable energy projects have already helped secure a pipeline of 99 gigawatts of wind and solar developments.”
Storage hydro is our old reliable power source but the changing weather patterns with prolonged El Niño has made it unreliable these days. Notice how Pantabangan and Magat dried up early this year. If there is water, storage hydro is a dependable renewable baseload power source. Imports are the most viable option for us now but that means we need proper receiving facilities. First Gas of the Lopezes has worked early to have that. But depending on floating storage for the meantime can be iffy and dangerous given our propensity to have strong typhoons with rough seas.
Nuclear power provides baseload. But that is out of the question for a country that dumped a ready to operate 620 MW nuclear power plant out of fear of nuclear energy. Some folks are now talking of small modular reactors, which at 300 MW isn’t really that small. But a recent technical report concluded that small modular reactors are still too expensive, too slow and too risky.
The renewables crowd is however insisting there is a solution to the problem of VREs being intermittent and unsuitable for baseload duties. Think storage, they say. VRE power plants can reduce instability by storing off-peak renewable energy in batteries or in compressed air energy storage. It is claimed that these storage technologies result in clean energy generation on-demand and a stable grid.
Bottomline: we still have all those aging coal power plants that must be rehabilitated or scrapped and a clear plan made to ensure their baseload duties will be taken on by similarly reliable baseload power sources: natgas or new coal. VREs are nice and trendy to have.