ACEN Switches On Battery-Ready 60-MW Luzon Solar

• ACEN flips the switch on a 60‑MW, battery‑ready solar park in Northern Luzon—grid-smart, evening-shiftable, and PPA-ready—blending bifacial tech with fleet-grade O&M for bankable uptime.

ACEN has energized a 60-MW solar park in Northern Luzon, targeting rising daytime demand and steeper evening ramps. Built with bifacial modules on single-axis trackers and string inverters, the plant meets Philippine grid-code requirements via a plant controller for reactive support and ride-through. The substation is battery-ready, reserving space and transformer headroom for a two-to-four-hour storage system to shift output into higher-priced evening periods and provide frequency services.

The capacity can serve utility PPAs, retail access, and corporate deals bundling certificates with shaped deliveries. Operations lean on fleet standards—string-level SCADA, drone thermography, IV-curve scans, predictive cleaning—supporting availability, cash flow, and lender comfort amid favorable transmission and hybridization policies.

How will ACEN’s 60-MW Luzon solar park leverage storage and grid support capabilities?

• Stage in a 2–4 hour BESS sized to absorb midday surplus and discharge across the 6–9 p.m. peak, capturing price spreads and smoothing the evening ramp
  
• Use AC-coupled architecture initially for fast retrofit and substation flexibility, with provision to add DC-coupled strings later for clipping recapture and round-trip efficiency gains
  
• Co-optimize arbitrage and reserves via an energy management system that stacks revenues from WESM energy, ancillary services, and capacity-style contracts
• Participate in regulating and contingency reserves with AGC-enabled response, meeting Philippine reserve market requirements for accuracy, latency, and sustain time
  
• Provide fast frequency response and primary frequency control using inverter-based droop settings and state-of-charge buffers, improving grid stability during contingencies
  
• Deliver voltage regulation and power factor correction through coordinated plant controller and BESS inverters, supporting local voltage profiles and reducing reactive draw
  
• Enforce ramp-rate limits on export by modulating battery charge/discharge, minimizing curtailment instructions and compliance penalties
  
• Offer ride-through and synthetic inertia (virtual synchronous machine or grid-forming modes when enabled) to support weak-grid conditions typical of remote Luzon nodes
  
• Shift clipped and curtailed solar output into off-sun hours, improving capacity factor and effective load-carrying capability for utility and corporate offtakers
  
• Use day-ahead and intraday forecasts to schedule charge windows, reserving state-of-charge for evening commitments while leaving headroom for reserve dispatch
  
• Mitigate congestion at the point of interconnection by absorbing during local constraints and releasing when transmission is unconstrained
  
• Enable shaped deliveries for retail and C&I contracts (e.g., 24/7 blocks, evening peakers), bundled with renewable certificates for premium pricing
  
• Support black-start and grid restoration roles at the substation (where permitted), improving system resiliency and creating additional service revenue
  
• Align with evolving ERC/NGCP hybrid and ancillary rules, ensuring telemetry, metering, and testing protocols allow full monetization of grid support services