From Private to Co-Op to Private - Is PI Electricity About to Go Full Circle?

[fillipino_wannabe]

Coal's cheap now that the power plants are already built but I can't see many people wanting to invest in new ones here. Probably 5+ years to build it and get permits and another 10 years to ROI. Decent chance solar (with batteries) will be cheaper than coal by then in the Philippines, they're probably not far off now if you include the price of constructing the coal power plant but I'm no greta thunberg so I won't make the argument.

[Possum]

28 minutes ago, fillipino_wannabe said:

Coal's cheap now that the power plants are already built but I can't see many people wanting to invest in new ones here. Probably 5+ years to build it and get permits and another 10 years to ROI. Decent chance solar (with batteries) will be cheaper than coal by then in the Philippines, they're probably not far off now if you include the price of constructing the coal power plant but I'm no greta thunberg so I won't make the argument.

If half of the NEA's not fully accounted for 3 billion peso budget had gone to provide PV and batteries for residential customers along with automatic 50% net metering there likely wouldn't be a need to add much additional generating capacity. But power companies hate that idea. Many years ago there was a major power company in the USA that was giving subsidies to people who installed heat pumps. That didn't last long and a few years later they wanted to charge people with heat pumps a higher rate to make up for the lost revenue. Thankfully that state had a semi honest public service commission and the rate increase didn't go thru. When I was living in Florida a power company got a multi-million dollar subsidy to install solar at one of it's steam generating plants and it saved them on fuel. Rates did not go down. One estimate was the same money could have been used to install solar water heaters on every home in the state and cut the average consumers bill by approximately 20% but would have also cut the money going to the power company. It's not about being environmentally responsible it's about profits which must always go up.

The short term answer for those that can afford it is solar and batteries as I don't see any change coming in the nezt 10+ years in the Philippines ability to provide reliable, affordable electricity.