SN Aboitiz set to finish rehabilitation of Magat plant in June

Manila Standard Today

By Alena Mae S. Flores | Mar. 03, 2014 at 12:01am

SN Aboitiz Power Corp., the joint venture between Aboitiz Power Corp. and SN Power of Norway, expects to complete the refurbishment of the 360-megawatt Magat hydroelectric power plant in Ramon, Isabela and Alfonso Lista, Ifugao by the middle of the year, a company official said.

“We are on the last unit of the Magat refurbishment. We’ve put it down the middle of January of this year and we expect that to be running early June or earlier than that. After this unit is completed, the whole Magat facility has gone half-life refurbishment, something which has not been done in the 25 years that the plant has been operating under NPC [National Power Corp.].  So once this unit is done, it’s all completely new Magat,” SN Aboitiz president Emmanuel Rubio told repoters.

SN Aboitiz owns the 360-MW  Magat hydropower plant, after offering the highest bid  to the government amounting to $530 million in 2006.

Rubio said the refurbishment of the Magat facility would bring the maximum production capacity of each of the four units of the Magat hydro plants to 95 MW per unit, up from 90 MW per unit.

“We already submitted to the WESM [Wholesale Electricity Spot Market] the revised maximum production capacity, 95 MW per unit from 90. Now the maximum offer Magat can submit to the WESM is 380 MW,” he said.

Rubio said the refurbishment did not include the expansion of the Magat facility, a process which was still awaiting the approval of the Energy Department.

The company applied with the department for a renewable energy service contract covering the 115-MW Magat expansion.

“[It is] without yet the expansion component, because the application for expansion of Magat is still pending with the DoE,” he said, adding that SN Aboitiz had already completed the engineering study for the Magat expansion.   source