Manila Standard Today
Thursday, 19 April, 2012 Written by Alena Mae S. Flores
Luzon would need 1,500 megawatts of additional power to avoid supply shortage over the next five years, the Energy Department said Wednesday.
“The ideal situation is another 1,500 MW by 2017, so that the next administration will have nothing to worry about,” Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras told reporters at the sidelines of the Financial Executives’ 4th general membership meeting.
Almendras said the agency would soon solicit proposals to establish new power plants to meet the 1,500 MW of additional capacity.
“I am encouraging companies to look at the 2017 generation requirement,” Almendras said.
The energy chief said a 600-MW coal-fired power plant owned by GN Power Ltd. was set to start operations by December, which is expected to support power requirements in 2013 and 2014.
The government also issued the permit for the Redondo Peninsula Energy’s 600-MW coal plant, which was expected to start operations by 2015.
Redondo is composed of Meralco PowerGen Corp., Therma Power Inc. (a wholly- owned subsidiary of Aboitiz Power Corp.) and Taiwan Cogeneration International Corp.—Philippine Branch.
Almendras said the government targets the expansion of Masinloc coal-fired power plant of AES Corp. and the Calaca coal-fired power plant to come online by 2015.
“I want another 1,500 MW for 2017. We should start talks now. Now, we don’t have a power shortage but I worry about 2015, so the program is for Redondo to come in by 2015,” he said.
Almendras placed current energy reserves in the Luzon grid at 2,000 MW. Power demand stands at 8,563 MW.
He claimed earlier there was no impending brownout in July, during the scheduled shutdown of the Malampaya gas field in northwest Palawan for a seven-day maintenance, although power rates were likely to go up.
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/April/19)
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