PSALM defers power barge sale to March

Manila Times.net
Published : Monday, December 05, 2011 00:00 Written by : EUAN PAULO C. AÑONUEVO REPORTER


STATE-RUN Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) has moved the privatization of government power barges to next year.


Emmanuel Ledesma, PSALM president, said the sale would be moved from January to March, making way for a grid impact study that the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines would conduct. “The study’s supposed to take four to six weeks, so that’s why there’s a slight delay,” he said.


Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras earlier asked PSALM if it could proceed with the sale of the PBs so the facilities could be transferred to Mindanao, which had been suffering from thin power reserves.


NGCP, however, would have to complete a study on the proposed transfer to ensure the stability of the region’s power grid.


“It’s just that the timetable cannot accommodate [a January schedule], so we’re looking at that sometime middle of March,” Ledesma said.


Government’s PBs 101 to 103 are moored in Iloilo, while PB 104 is stationed at Davao City.


The PBs are movable and can be relocated anywhere with adequate mooring structures. Designed as base-load plants, PBs 101, 102, 103 and 104 are 32-megawatt barge-mounted bunker-fired diesel generating power stations that consist of four identical Hitachi-Sulzer diesel generator units rated at eight megawatts each.


Under the bidding rules for the PBs, winners would have to immediately transfer these power facilities to Mindanao and would have to stay there until 2014.


“We have put in a provision in the sales’ terms of reference of the Power Barges 101 to 104 that it would have to be transferred immediately to Mindanao and could only be transferred to other places by the winning bidders after three years,” Ledesma said.Mindanao’s power reserves are not enough to meet grid requirements because of the region’s heavy reliance on hydroelectric plants.


This has resulted in power outages in the region during times of extreme heat and high demand, and whenever a power plant is shutdown for maintenance works.