|
EXPECTED
to supply part of the base-load power requirement in
Mindanao four years from now, Alcantara-led Conal
Holdings Co. (CHC) said Tuesday that it will build a
$450-million 200-megawatt (MW) coal–fired power station
in southern Mindanao.
The
Kamanga Power Plant (KPP) will be located in barangay
Kamanga in Maasim town, Saranggani province.
In a
statement, Gregorio Gonzales, KPP project manager, said
the plant is designed to accommodate an increase in
generating capacity of up to 900 MW. The company is
currently validating technical surveys in the project
site and is wrapping up the conduct of feasibility
studies. Construction is expected to begin in the middle
of next year.
CHC is a
joint venture between the Alcantara family and
Thai-owned power firm EGKO.
In
September 2007, Tomas Alcantara, chairman of the
Alcantara Group of Companies (Alsons), announced the
company is building a coal-fired power plant in
Saranggani in anticipation of a projected power shortage
in Mindanao.”This power station will serve the
requirements of
Mindanao’s distribution utilities, particularly those in the south, as well as
those of the various industrial loads. It will be the
cheapest new entrant in the grid when it becomes
operational in 2012,” Alcantara said.
Alsons
has been in the power-generation business for over 15
years. It operates the Western Mindanao Power Corp. in
Zamboanga and the Southern Philippine Power Corp. in
Saranggani. A third plant, the Northern Mindanao Power
Corp. in Iligan City, has already been transferred to
the National Power Corp, under the BOT
(build-operate-transfer) scheme. All three power plants
are bunker C-fired
The
Alcantara company also owns a 60-MW bunker C-fired
diesel power station in Sulawesi, Indonesia and operates
power plants in Vietnam, China and Pakistan
Mindanao
has an existing generating capacity of 1,850.4 MW,
beginning 2008 but the dependable capacity is only 1,520
MW. Peak demand starting this year is projected to hit
1,440 MW.
Industry
regulations require the
Mindanao grid to maintain a reserve capacity of at least 23.4 percent
of their generating capacity. Peak demand for power
supply by 2015 is expected to hit 1,750 MW. At present,
only the Sibulan 70-MW Hydro Power Plant Project in Sta.
Cruz,
Davao is under construction.
“We
expect power supply to become tighter and tighter over
the next three years, edging towards a shortage by 2012
and onwards. This is the main objective of the Kamanga
Power Plant project.—to fill the gap between supply and
demand,” Gonzales said.
The KPP
project expects to initially generate 200 MW of
electricity by 2011 with two incremental expansions of
350 MW over a 15-year period. When fully completed, the
power plant will be able to generate 900 MW of
electricity. It will serve as a major source of energy
for southern Mindanao and will be able to supply 15
percent of the power needs in the region. But concerns
over carbon emissions have critics raising howls over
its impact on the environment.
Gonzales, however, quickly allayed fears aired by
critics, most especially from the Catholic Church in the
region.
The KPP
project, he pointed out, will comply with all the
emission standards set by the Philippine Clean Air Act
(Republic Act 8749) of 1999.
“The
design we have chosen will have emissions way-below the
ceilings set by law. The plant will use the circulating
fluidized bed combustion (CFBC) process, said to be the
most efficient and cleanest among available coal-powered
plant technologies in the industry today,” he said.
The CFBC
technology has a wide range of fuel acceptability. It
can use low-grade coal, biomass, sludge, waste plastics
and waste tire as fuel. Conventional boilers for power
generation can use only fossil fuel such as high-grade
coal, oil and gas. |
