GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/14 August)—Peakpower Energy Inc. launched Wednesday the construction of its 20-megawatt diesel power plant here to help stabilize the city’s power situation.
Worth at least P1 billion, the power plant, located at the compound of the South Cotabato II Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Socoteco-2), is targeted to go on stream after one year.
Peakpower is a wholly-owned subsidiary of A Brown Company, Inc. (ABCI), a publicly-listed holding company based in Cagayan de Oro City.
“We are not here to compete, we are here to complement,” ABCI chairman Walter Brown said, noting they are investing in the city in response to the recurring power supply problem facing the area since 2010.
Crippling brownouts lasting eight hours daily were felt anew here in the last few months, but nowadays the city has ample power supply.
Rodolfo Ocat, Socoteco-2 general manager, said that Peakpower will construct the power plant on a build-operate-transfer scheme.
“We agreed that after 15 years, the power plant will be transferred to the cooperative,” he told reporters.
Ocat said the Environmental Management Bureau has already granted the environmental compliance certificate for the power plant project.
However, the power sales agreement (PSA) between Peakpower and Socoteco 2 has yet to be approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission, he said.
Socoteco-2 serves this city, the entire Sarangani province and the towns of Polomolok and Tupi in South Cotabato.
The cooperative earlier signed a PSA with the Sarangani Energy Corp., a subsidiary of the Alcantara Group, for 70 MW that will come from the 200-MW coal-fired power plant being constructed in nearby Maasim, Sarangani.
The Maasim power plant is targeted to start operations in 2015 at an initial capacity of 100 MW.
The power that will be supplied by both Sarangani Energy and Peakpower will not be connected to the Mindanao grid operated by the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines but directly to the transmission facilities of Socoteco-2.
Ocat said they expect the power situation in the city to stabilize starting 2015 with the supply committed by these power generation companies.
Aside from this city, Peakpower is also constructing a five-MW bunker-fired power plant in San Francisco in Agusan del Sur.
“These projects will be operational in the second half of 2014 and will use Wartsila bunker-fired engines,” a company briefer said.
Wartsila is a global player involved in power solutions for the marine and energy markets, with around 49 gigawatts of installed power in 4,599 power plants across the world. In the Philippines, there are at least 2 GW of installed Wartsila engines, it added. (Bong S. Sarmiento/MindaNews)