Ayala-led consortium taps China firm for power deal

MANILA, Philippines—An Ayala Corp.-backed consortium has tapped a unit of China’s Power Construction Corp. to build a $1 billion thermal facility in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte.

A filing at the Philippine Stock Exchange showed that GNPower Kauswagan Ltd. Co., a joint venture between Ayala’s AC Energy Holdings Inc. and Power Partners Ltd. Co. (PPLC), tapped Power Construction’s Shanghai Electric Power Construction Co. for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the facility.

GNPower Kauswagan recently executed the EPC contract for the 4×138 megawatt (MW) thermal facility with construction scheduled to begin by the fourth quarter of this year.

“The project is expected to be completed within three years with the first unit operational by early 2017,” Ayala Corp. said in the filing.

The plant will be equipped with cutting-edge equipment, including four Siemens steam turbines and generators manufactured in Germany.

GNPower Kauswagan has already executed well over 300MW of long term power purchase agreements and has secured its Environmental Compliance Certificate from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

“We recognize that Mindanao is in dire need of power and we are keen to provide the needed capacity at very reasonable and affordable terms,” AC Energy president and CEO John Eric Francia said.

“We are also excited about this new addition to our growing pipeline of power projects. This puts us on track to achieve our goal of developing over 1,000MW of attributable capacity both in conventional and renewable technologies by 2016,” he added.

Earlier this year, AC Energy closed the acquisition of an approximately 17 percent ownership stake in GNPower Mariveles Coal Plant Ltd. Co., the owner and operator of a 600-MW coal-fired power generating plant in Mariveles, Bataan. GNPower Mariveles started full commercial operations last April.