Haberler

Aboitiz Power to invest $300 milion for Tiwi and Makban facilities, Philippines

Geothermal power plant Tiwi, Albay, Philippines (source: flickr/sherwin_magayanes)
Alexander Richter 28 Ağu 2013

Aboitiz Power is planning investments of up to $300 million to increase the capacity of its Tiwi-Makban geothermal plants from currently 400 MW to 460 MW, possibly in partnership with Chevron's Philippine Geothermal Production Co. Inc.

AboitizPower is investing around $150 million to increase the reliability and availability of the Tiwi and Makban geothermal facilities in Albay and Laguna, respectively.

The Aboitiz subsidiary AP Renewables Inc., acquired the Tiwi-Makban plants in 2008 for $447 million. The company sees a possibility to expand the plant’s capacity, but will have to await results from proposals and feasibility study.  It should be possible to increase the capacity to 460 MW a 60 MW increase over current capacity.

The plants currently produce a consistent 400 MW, but produced over 460 MW when it was taken over by Aboitiz. For the expansion, a partnership with Chevron, through Philippine Geothermal Production Co., Inc., would be possible.

After acquisition and putting in fresh investments, AboitizPower increased Tiwi geothermal plant’s capacity factors — the number of hours the power plant is able to generate power over a certain period, divided by the total number of hours in a year — by 24.73 percent to 97.83  percent from 73.10  percent prior to the acquisition, the company said.

The Makban geothermal plant’s availability factor also increased 15.3 percentage points to 97.52 percent from 82.49 percent prior to the acquisition.

Furthermore, AboitizPower brought down the forced outage rate to 1.67 percent and 3.55 percent for the Tiwi and MakBan geothermal facilities, respectively, from 2.06 percent and 3.81 percent before the acquisition.”

Source: PhilStar