Published
By Myrna M. Velasco
Listed firm Aboitiz
Power Corporation continues to knock on electricity end-users’ doors for
additional power supply contracts that will shore up the revenue stream of its
300-megawatt Therma Visayas, Inc. (TVI) coal-fired power plant in Toledo, Cebu.
Luis Miguel O. Aboitiz,
chief operating officer of the conglomerate’s Corporate Business Group, has
indicated that only 50-percent of the plant’s capacity has been underpinned by
power supply agreements so far. This entails further efforts on their part to
seek out much-needed additional supply deals.
The Toledo plant is
targeted to reach full commercial operations in the second quarter of next year
but, at that time, Aboitiz said its capacity “will just probably be
half-contracted.”
The retail space of the
restructured electricity sector is where competition has been raging at this
point, but Aboitiz still auspiciously opts for new contracts for their Cebu
plant from that segment of the consumers’ base.
“It’s mostly open
access right now,” he said, when asked on the market prospects of the plant’s
generated capacity – manifestly in reference to the Retail Competition and Open
Access (RCOA) policy in the power sector that is still currently enforced on voluntary
basis for those customers exercising their ‘power of choice’ on suppliers.
The other strategy
being thought out by the company would be the shifting of power contracts to
their Toledo plant once it comes on full stream next year.
“We have a lot of customers
in Visayas who are being served by our plants from Luzon, so the moment the
second unit of TVI comes in, we will assign those contracts closer to the
customer,” Aboitiz said.
If that is concretized,
he noted that the capacity of the Toledo plant will also end up almost fully
contracted.
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