Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Aboitiz proposes four new hydropower plants

Posted on 09:02 PM, September 22, 2010
DAVAO CITY -- Aboitiz unit Hedcor, Inc. is finalizing plans for four more hydroelectric plants with generating capacity of roughly 40 megawatts (MW).
Two of the new plants will be along Sibulan River in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur, where the company is already operating a 26.5-MW hydropower facility. The other two will be in Compostela Valley and Bukidnon.


Gregorio P. Jabonillo, company vice-president for development, said the Sibulan upstream power plant would have a capacity of about 10 MW, while the plant downstream would have about 5 MW.


“Right now we are already finalizing the designs of these plants,” Mr. Jabonillo told BusinessWorld, adding his office has started securing the permits after getting an endorsement from the municipal government.


“We hope to start these two plants during the last quarter of next year,” he said. The company estimates roughly P3.5 billion in investments for the combined 15-megawatt Sibulan projects.


Mr. Jabonillo said the company first negotiated with the Davao del Sur Electric Cooperative for a power supply agreement, but the cooperative rejected the proposal. This prompted Hedcor to sign an agreement with Davao Light and Power Co. Both companies are subsidiaries of listed Aboitiz Power Corp.


Hedcor is also finalizing plans to put up two more hydroelectric power plants in Compostela Valley, with 13 MW of capacity, as well as Bukidnon.


“We are still conducting our survey on the capacity of the plant that we will build in Bukidnon,” Mr. Jabonillo said.


Erramon I. Aboitiz, Aboitiz Power Corp. president, said the company would be aggressive in building more hydroelectric plants in response to the need for more power generating capacity in Mindanao, which has been dealing with power shortages.


The company is putting up more hydroelectric plants to help in the push for more renewable power that will not destroy the environment, he said.


In his visit to the Sibulan hydroelectric power plant, President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III ordered the Department of Energy to come up with a power road map for Mindanao to address the power problem.


Based on the data from the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) as of Sept. 22, Mindanao’s peak load was already at 1,201 megawatts while output stood at 1,084 megawatts, or 117 megawatts short during peak hours. Because of the deficiency, several areas in Mindanao were hit with rotating power outages.


A press statement from Davao Light on Sept. 17 said NGCP had imposed a 300-megawatt “load curtailment” on southern Mindanao, including this city, since the government-run hydroelectric plants in Bukidnon and Iligan were not operating at their full capacities.


Davao City, however, was hardly affected by the outage compared with other Mindanao areas considering Davao Light has a 40-megawatt diesel-powered standby plant, and it is getting additional power from the Sibulan hydroelectric plant of Hedcor. --Carmelito Q. Francisco

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