ALTHOUGH renewable energy is deemed to help solve Mindanao’s power crisis, the issue of affordable electricity from such source is still being raised by Manny Yaphuckon, former president of the General Santos City Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“Trouble is they do not come cheap. Even if it is readily available, the question is can we afford the price?” he further asked.
Yaphuckon, an electrical engineer, said solar energy could drive the P3-per-kilowatt-hour (kWh) generating cost charged by the National Power Corp. (Napocor) to increase to as much as P19 per kWh.
“I have also some problems with wind. I believe we need a sustained minimum speed to drive the turbines on a 24-hour basis. And we do not have that kind of sustained wind velocity here,” he also pointed out.
Yaphuckon said there are not enough hydropower sources in Central Mindanao to build a 200-megawatt (MW) capacity.
“We [in General Santos] need a base-load capacity of at least 80 megawatts,” he added.
Yaphuckon issued this statement in view of the arrival in the area of Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior. Greenpeace has been advocating for renewable energy.
But even Conal Holdings challenged Greenpeace to build a base-load power plant that will sell cheap and steady power using renewable energy.
“If they can sell it cheap, we will buy it from them,” Joseph Nocos, Conal Holdings vice president for business administration, said.
Citing their feasibility studies, Nocos said alternative-energy sources that could generate as much as 200-MW are not available in Mindanao.
“Mindanao is not within the wind zone that can produce energy on a 24/7 and sustained bases. Solar power is also available only for a limited number of hours. And deploying these types of power plants will drive electricity bills beyond the reach of ordinary households,” Nocos said.
He pointed out that “these types of plants generate electricity only 20 to 25 percent of the time, which could just drive up the cost of capital recovery four to five times.”
Nocos said wind and solar powers’ generation costs could amount to P20/kWh and P25/kWh, respectively.
“And because wind and solar are only available 20 to 25 percent of the time, wind farms still need to be supplemented by diesel-power generation that will just jack up the cost of electricity further.”
Nocos noted that opportunities to build hydropower plants are just limited to small and dispersed capacities.
He also emphasized that over reliance on hydropower made Mindanao extremely vulnerable to droughts similar to the first half of 2010 when some parts of Mindanao experienced 12-hour rotational brownouts.
Mindanao has an installed hydropower capacity of over 900 MW from the more than 700-MW Agus River hydropower plant complex and the 225-MW Pulangi hydropower plant. Mindanao also has 105 MW of generating capacity from the Mount Apo geothermal power plants.
The hydropower plants and geothermal power plants make up close to 60 percent of the island’s 1,820-MW installed capacity. But the available capacity in Mindanao is now down to 1,320 MW.
Greenpeace has been advocating for a 50-percent renewable-energy use in the country by 2020.
“Mindanao alone has been [using] 60-percent renewable [energy] since 1999, beating the Greenpeace target to have 50 percent of generating capacity sourced from renewable energy by 2020,” Nocos said.
Mindanao has been already suffering from power-supply shortfall with reserve capacity virtually nonexistent, and it will still be short by 450 MW in 2015 unless new capacities are built within the period.
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