New First Gen gas plant to start running

A wholly owned unit of First Gen Corp. has been given the green light by regulators to start the commercial operations of its 97-megawatt San Gabriel Avion natural gas-fired power plant, enabling the company to provide the much needed additional capacity to the Luzon grid.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange Thursday, First Gen said that its unit, Prime Meridian Powergen Corp., received the certificate of compliance (COC) issued by the Energy Regulatory Commission for the Avion Plant, which is located within the parent firm’s clean energy complex in Batangas.

A COC, which is valid for five years, is a vital legal requirement for a company to continue the commercial operation of its power plant. It meant that the power firm was found compliant to technical, financial and environmental standards provided in the ERC guidelines and has also stayed within the cross-ownership and market share limitations set by the commission to prevent market abuse.

“With the approval of the COC by the ERC, we can now apply (with) Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) to change the status of the 97-MW Avion project from commissioning and testing to commercial operations,” said First Gen president and chief operating officer Francis Giles B. Puno.

“This will allow us to bid Avion’s capacity to the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market. The flexibility of the Avion plant will be able to supply immediate power needs to the market especially during peak hours and when other plants go on unscheduled outages,” Puno said in a statement.

The certificate on the change of status of the Avion Plant to commercial operations remained under process with WESM operator PEMC.

The additional capacity from the Avion plant will help secure a more stable supply for the Luzon grid, which has been experiencing spates of red alerts since late July. This was due to the simultaneous outages of power plants, some of which are under preventive maintenance while the rest were considered forced outages. This has resulted in rotating brownouts within Metro Manila and some parts of Luzon.