Philippines: Aseagas fires up biomass facility

Philippines: Aseagas fires up biomass facility

Aseagas Corp. has started operating its 8.8-megawatt biomass power plant in
Sitio Hermosa, Barangay Malaruhatan in Lian, Batangas

Danel Aboitiz, president and chief operating officer of Aboitiz Power
Corp.'s oil business unit, told reporters the company planned to start
commercial operations of the plant in the next two months. The power plant
uses organic wastes as fuel.

"Commissioning is very difficult to predict. . it's our first time to
commission that kind of power plant., he said.

"With all the other power players who have moved to a different kind of
technology, they had notoriously low availability factors during the first
six months of commissioning," he said.

Aboitiz said the company they had not made any expansion plans and was
focusing on the commissioning of the plant.

He said the project would avail of the feed-in tariff rate given to a
renewable energy source under the Renewable Energy Act of 2001.

Aseagas has marked a major safety milestone after recording one million
hours of safe working without lost time incident.

"Aseagas has carried out work over the last two years in a challenging
environment. To reach one million man hours is a considerable milestone in
itself, but to accomplish this without a single reported incident is a
significant achievement," Aseagas president Sabin Aboitiz said.

The first Aseagas plant will use the organic effluent directly from Absolut
Distillery's plant in Lian, Batangas, where the wastewater is converted into
power and other by-products. The plant could power 22,000 households.

Aboitiz Renewables Inc. , a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aboitiz Power,
earlier acquired all the equity interest of Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. in
Aseagas for P605 million.

"The acquisition of the shares in Aseagas is in line with Aboitiz Power's
target to increase its attributable net sellable capacity to 4,000 MW by
2020," Aboitiz Power said.

The sale involves 72,710,000 common shares and 654,300,000 redeemable
preferred shares priced at P0.832175 and P0.832175, respectively.

The board of Aboitiz Equity approved the sale of all of its equity
interests in Aseagas to Aboitiz Renewables in April.

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Ref:
http://thestandard.com.ph/business/220172/aseagas-fires-up-biomass-facility.
html

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com