Philippines Energy Company Junk Coal Plant & Break Ground on Latest BESS

In the central Philippines, energy company Aboitiz Power is tearing out old coal and diesel units and replacing them with giant batteries. On July 1, it broke ground on a 60-megawatt battery storage system in Naga, Cebu, built on the site of a coal plant from the 1980s that has now been fully demolished. The battery, with 120 megawatt-hours of capacity, will store extra power when demand is low and release it within milliseconds when supply drops, acting as a backup for the grid. It's expected to be running by October 2027. A separate 30-megawatt battery near Lapu-Lapu City is also nearly finished and awaiting approval to go online.

This is part of a much larger shift in the region. The Philippine government has ordered energy companies to add at least 170 megawatts of battery storage across the islands of Cebu, Negros, and Panay, and regulators are currently reviewing 17 more storage project applications. Aboitiz alone now has more than 10 battery projects in various stages across the country, including sites in Mindanao and Luzon, some paired with existing hydroelectric dams. Other companies are moving too: Meralco PowerGen recently switched on a 25-megawatt battery in western Cebu using advanced lithium-ion cells.

None of this is a program homeowners in the US can tap into, but it shows how utilities elsewhere are using large batteries, rather than new fossil fuel plants, to keep the lights on as more solar and wind power comes online.