Posted on July 12, 2015 09:24:00 PM
DEVELOPING BIOMASS power projects in off-grid areas can provide a stable and clean power supply at lower costs compared with diesel plants’, an official from multinational firm General Electric (GE) said in a recent interview.
John V. Alcordo, GE’s regional general manager for distributed power among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said that agricultural waste in these areas may be utilized to build efficient biomass projects.
Mr. Alcordo said GE’s Distributed Power unit wants to introduce the biomass gasification technology in parts of the country that are not directly connected to the grid.
“It’s different from the usual steam turbine because we extract methane from the feedstock, gasify it, and use it to generate electricity. The waste form can even be used for fertilizer,” Mr. Alcordo said in Mandaluyong City.
Implementing the project will involve deployment of power using smaller engines, which have capacities ranging from 200 kilowatts to 100 megawatts (MW).
Distributed power means the electricity supply gets generated at the point of consumption.
Mr. Alcordo said the application of distributed power in biomass projects could help address energy deficiency concerns and, unlike diesel, even provides clean energy.
The technology can also be used by customers who want to generate their own power.
Mr. Alcordo said distributed power will also be ideal for small- to medium-scale industries with requirements of less than 10 MW. This is just one possible application of distributed power.
The GE official said this business segment has three core products: aeroderivative gas turbines, Jenbacher engines, and Waukesha engines.
Distributed power, Mr. Alcordo said, provides power supply without sparking interconnection concerns and high power costs.
According to him, this addresses the problems of dispatching power to areas not interconnected to the national grid, which has been a problem of many power generation projects in the country.
GE even sold its first aeroderivative gas turbine in the Philippines to the Lopez Group’s First Gen Corp. for the company’s 100-MW Avion natural gas power plant.
Mr. Alcordo said such engines, compared with other technologies, area easy to deploy. This fits well with First Gen’s goal to bring in a peaking plant within a year.
“The advantage of this is that it’s designed for rapid start-up. It can go from zero to full load in less than five minutes, and you can turn it on and off, which you could not do with regular gas turbines because maintenance costs will go up,” Mr. Alcordo explained.
He said the aeroderivative technology can serve Luzon’s peaking market, which was estimated at about 1,000 MW.
“The market is there. We’re already talking to a couple of other parties who want to do a similar project,” Mr. Alcordo said.
Given the scale of distributed power, companies can even opt for smaller projects, he said.
For instance, the official said there are companies now considering liquefied natural gas (LNG) in smaller capacities while waiting for the major import terminals that will be built in the Philippines.
The country currently hosts three big natural gas projects: the 1,200-MW Ilijan plant, the 1,000-MW Santa Rita plant, and the 500-MW San Lorenzo plant.
The Lopez Group is also planning to add more natural gas projects, including the 100-MW peaking plant that utilizes GE’s aeroderivative technology.
Mr. Alcordo emphasized that other players who want to test LNG at smaller capacities can still go into the business without being threatened by the scale of other projects.
“They get LNG from a large base like Singapore. So, there are smaller quantities and smaller ships that can do shorter runs. Once it gets here, we only need a smaller regasification terminal. We can bring in 50 MW of LNG in the country,” Mr. Alcordo said. -- Claire-Ann Marie C. Feliciano source
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