Written by James Konstantin Galvez Published on 22 April 2013
As part of the effort to ease the power crisis in Mindanao, the sugar industry will push co-generation power plants in major sugar-producing regions, which aims provide additional generated capacity to the grid.
Ma. Regina Bautista-Martin, Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) administrator, said that the agency is now talking with various sugar mill operators, particularly those in Mindanao, for the establishment of co-generation power plants.
“Sugar mills have the potential to export power to the grid from the burning of bagasse. There are plans of harnessing this potential, if these are tapped, it could produce about 200 megawatts [MW] of bio-power,” she said.
In fact, Martin said that one sugar mill in Maramag, Bukidnon—Crystal Sugar Co. Inc.—has commissioned a new high-pressure boiler to upgrade its existing power generating capacity to the grid.
She said that the upgrade resulted to a total generating capacity of around 9 to 10 megawatts, of which 5 to 6 megawatts were distributed to the grid.
Pablo Lobregat, owner of Crystal Sugar, said that the company was previously exporting a steady of 4 megawatts per hour, adding that from the start of the current cropping season, more than 20 million kilowatts of electricity have been exported to the grid.
“This project has always been very low key, but we are proud to be helping mitigate the power shortage in Mindanao in some way. It may be a small contribution but this good news of the advancement of the sugar,” Lobregat said.
Crystal Sugar started the commercial operation of its bagasse-fired power plant in May 2010 at a variable generating capacity of several hundred kilowatt-hours to a couple of megawatt-hours of electricity.
It may be recalled that the first sugar mill in the country to commercially sell its excess electricity to the grid is First Farmers Holdings Corp. in Talisay, Negros Occidental, that started its operation in 2009 with a declared capacity of 8 megawatts. source
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