Philippines: Mindanao now enjoys power supply surplus

Philippines: Mindanao now enjoys power supply surplus

Mindanao is now enjoying electricity supply surplus and is working to
sustain the development of power resources with renewable energy (RE) beyond
2020, a ranking official said.

The energy surplus is on account of the entry of baseload plants,
particularly coal fired facilities that have come online starting this year
and will continue in 2017 and 2018, Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA)
deputy executive director Romeo Montenegro said in an interview with The
STAR.

By then, the region will have a 70-30 energy mix in favor of fossil-fueled
power plants.

"With the entry of specific investments in industry, manufacturing and
services sector that are very much hungry for energy, we can comfortably say
now that Mindanao is able to address requirements of these investments," he
said.

Now, MinDA is working to accelerate the deployment of RE projects to meet
its 50-50 energy mix target by 2030.

"We're looking at assisting big ones that are currently on several phases of
application.plus other small ones," Montenegro said.

Among these projects are the 250-megawatt (MW) Agus 3 hydropower plant and
the 300-MW Pulangi 5 hydropower plant.

Agus 3 was already auctioned and is now preparing for financial closing,
while Pulangi 5 was among the contracts signed in China during the recent
visit of President Duterte.

"These two capacities already has combined 550 MW cheaper source of
capacity," Montenegro said.

Meanwhile, MinDA is currently monitoring applications of 280 projects, more
than half of which are run-of-river power projects ranging from 2.5 MW to 80
MW in capacity.

Montenegro said Mindanao has a geographical advantage of having many rivers
that's why a number of RE projects are run-of-river hydro plants.

A challenge with hydropower, however, is that, capacity is affected by
climactic change. That is why hydro plants need to be complemented with
other RE soures, Montenegro said.

"We need to look at the viability of other technologies such as biomass and
solar to complement the run-of-river set up since this cannot serve for 24
hours," the MinDA official said.

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Link to Original Article:
http://www.philstar.com/business/2016/11/28/1648019/mindanao-now-enjoys-powe
r-supply-surplus

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com