San Carlos City in northern Negros Occidental may soon become the principal power source for the province and, possibly, event the entire Negros Island, reports said.

There is the San Carlos Wind Power Corp., owned by the Filipino Smith Bell Group of Companies and Global Renewable Energy Partners of Denmark, which is developing a 30-megawatt wind farm project.

Then, there is the San Carlos Bioethanol Corp. plant that will sell its co-generated excess power to the National Power Corp., which is also a partner in the ethanol fuel project, the reports also said.

Lately, the Smith Bell Group announced that it intends to invest an additional $110 million for the second phase of the San Carlos wind farm project.

San Carlos Wind Power Corp. president, Ruth Yu-Owen, said the firm is eyeing its expansion to another town nearby but bigger, or twice the size of the first project output of 30 megawatts. In effect, that will be about 60 megawatts.

This phase of the construction will begin by 2008 and up to 2009.

The first phase of the project is financed $55-million by the Danish International Development Agency. The first phase of the project will terminate next year, reports said.

DANIDA will likely be tapped again for the provide financing for the second phase of the project.

The new wind farm around Mount Malindog in Brgys. Prosperidad and Linubagan in San Carlos is slated to begin its operations next year, reports said.

The San Carlos Bioethanol plant is expected to be operationalized late next year and will sell part of its excess power to the Napocor, which had already agreed to the plan, a press release from the firm said.

With the PNOC-EDC geothermal power project in Bago City, Negros Island can become later self-efficient in power and may even sell its excess to Panay Island, reports said.

Wind power, however, has a setback. It lacks the power storage capacity which means that it must feed its energy produced direct to the grid.*RLE

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