Power firm secures supply contract

Manila Bulletin 
By Myrna M. Velasco 
Published: May 27, 2013 
Peakpower Energy Inc., a subsidiary of listed firm A. Brown Co. Inc., has sealed a new electric power purchase agreement (EPPA) with Agusan del Sur Electric Cooperative (ASELCO) for the capacity off-take of its another proposed bunker-fired power facility in Mindanao.
According to Peakpower president Roel Z. Castro, their company will be putting up the 5.0MW power plant within the franchise area of ASELCO.
The supply deal, the A. Brown power firm added, has already been submitted to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) for approval.
The planned facility will be implemented based on a build-operate-maintain-transfer (BOT) scheme on an agreed cooperation period.
This is already the second oil-fired plant that the A. Brown Group will be putting up in the grid, the other one is the 20.9MW to be constructed in South Cotabato.
For ASELCO board president Joel Q. Jumonong, the project is needed by the electric cooperative “to fulfill our mandate and to address the adverse effects of the electricity crisis in our area.”
He added the electric cooperative “is in immediate need of generating capacity for its peaking requirements.”
Both firms noted that a bunker-fired plant is the most feasible stop-gap measure to supply the needs of ASELCO’s service area since no new large capacities are coming on stream in the grid until 2015.
Several areas in Mindanao have been suffering from recurrent power outages – a dismal condition that consumers in the region might have to suffer in the next two to three years more.
The long-term solution for Mindanao power supply is just seen coming with the commercial operations of the coal-fired plants currently being developed by the Aboitiz and Alcantara groups.
For the short-term solutions, while there are measures proposed by government, some of these are not really moving as fast as expected.
This has been prompting power utilities in the grid then, including the electric cooperatives, to scour for remedial measures and coping mechanisms that could ease brownout conditions in their respective franchise areas.   source