SINGAPORE—The Spain-Portugal blackouts, which had been partly blamed on overreliance on solar without enough capacity backup, signal a warranted acceleration of energy storage investments for markets like the Philippines that have been betting on massive-scale renewables.

In an exclusive interview here, ACEN President and CEO Eric T. Francia indicated that the European blackouts set clear warning for the Philippines on “accelerated scale up of battery storage,” and that also calls for bigger capacities to be included in the green energy auctions (GEAs) being administered by the Department of Energy.

Beyond the integrated renewable energy and energy storage system (IRESS) that will be included in GEA-4, he opined that a separate tender process shall be carried out for energy storage investments that will help solve the influx of solar power in the country’s power system.

At this stage, business models like energy time shifting (ETS) had been recommended so generation companies will be enticed to invest in stand-alone energy storage systems that can soak up excess solar generation and avoid the costly curtailments—and these stored energy from RE capacities shall be accorded separate incentives, comparable to feed-in-tariff (FIT) or green energy auction reserve (GEAR) pricing scheme to be drawn by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

“The DOE (Department of Energy) can do a separate auction for ETS, so it would be battery and it will do it through an ETS structure—and battery shall be defined as generation; and it would be better if a grid charge is not factored in anymore, that will make investments more competitive,” he said.

Francia emphasized “the IRESS will just avoid worsening the problem; but it will not solve the additional pure solar—so you need ETS, you need standalone battery storage framework to really scale up the accelerated scale up of battery storage—whether it’s stand-alone or you encourage current investors or owners of solar plants to put behind-the-meter or beside the meter.”

He further noted that these energy storage systems shall also be installed “around the hotspot areas where there is a lot of intermittent solar or a lot of curtailments typically caused by solar—be it near the solar plants or near the substations where the solar plants deliver their power, and that’s urgent.”

The ACEN executive expounded that “the rule of thumb that we use typically is 30 percent of solar installation—so if you have solar installation of 6,000 MW—30 percent of that or 2,000 MW shall account for energy storage generally.”

For the Ayala energy firm, in particular, he qualified that the company has been experiencing curtailments at its solar plants in Lal-lo, Cagayan, and Palauig, Zambales; but these curtailed generation would be able to add up to an additional supply in the grid with the installation of energy storage systems.

Nevertheless, for additional capital to be injected by power plant developers, the government will need to enforce a policy for this proposed new asset class, and it shall also be underpinned with viable incentive mechanisms, either through the proposed ETS or other framework that the government will be institutionalizing.

Intermittent RE technologies—primarily wind and solar—typically have generation dips and surges; and without storage, the wild swings in their generation capacity can cause frequency imbalances in the grid that will then trigger blackouts.

Additionally, if there would be no energy storage, excess in clean energy generation from solar or wind plants would also end up getting wasted, instead of them shoring up available supply in the grid.