MANILA, Philippines—The Alcantara Group’s power subsidiary, Conal Holdings Corp., said on Wednesday it would proceed with the construction of a $450-million, coal-fired power plant in Maasim, Sarangani Province.
The 200-megawatt project would be implemented in two phases, according to CHC project manager Gregorio S. Gonzales.
“Phase I will include the construction of the first 100-megawatt plant and the common facilities for the whole power station complex. Phase II, representing the second 100-megawatt capacity, will be started within 18 to 24 months after the commencement of construction of Phase I,” Gonzales added.
He said the power plant was expected to go on-stream commercially by late 2012, at the earliest.
CHC’s coal facility is expected to help ease the power supply shortfall in Mindanao, which is expected to reach 174 MW by 2011.
In October last year, Energy Secretary Angelo T. Reyes warned that this year, electricity demand would “outstrip supply in Mindanao.”
According to the Department of Energy, 2009 would already be critical for the Mindanao grid with peak demand reaching 1,525 MW, excluding the additional capacity requirement of 100 MW.
Based on its own estimates, CHC pegged the growth in power demand on the island at a conservative 3 percent annually, using 2008 (with a peak demand level of 1,288 MW) as the base year.
“At this rate, the actual reserves in the Mindanao grid will likely fall by 60 MW in 2014 and 16 MW in 2015 before completely going into a deficit in 2016. When reserve capacity goes down to this level, any plant outage in the grid will lead to power outages,” CHC said.
“Thus, the completion of the second [phase] of the coal project in late 2014 will just be in time to stave off a regime of rolling brownouts due to a shortage in capacity in the Mindanao grid,” the company added.
CHC—a joint venture between the Alcantara family’s Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. and Thailand’s Egco—will put up the power plant within the franchise area of local power distributor South Cotabato II Electric cooperative (Socoteco II).
CHC said it expected prices of electricity in South Cotabato to drop by as much as 95 centavos a kilowatt-hour as soon as the facility goes on stream.
