Ilijan plant goes diesel for summer

MANILA, Philippines–The 1,200-MEGAWATT (MW) Ilijan natural gas plant in Batangas is set to shift to diesel oil for the summer, when the Malampaya gas field operation temporarily shuts down for platform installation, so that the facility can provide much-needed additional power to the Luzon grid.

State-owned Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp. is bidding out the supply and delivery of industrial diesel oil (IDO) requirements for the Ilijan natural gas power plant for 2015 and has set a budget of P1.66 billion for it.

“The IDO procurement project shall ensure the operation of Ilijan this year, especially with the anticipated tightening of power supply in the summer,” PSALM president and CEO Emmanuel R. Ledesma, Jr. said.

On Jan. 23, 2015, PSALM published a bid notice to buy 60 million liters of diesel oil for the Ilijan power plant. It started giving out bid documents last Jan. 23 and will accept bids until Feb. 16.

Energy Undersecretary Zenaida Monsada said this was the first time that the Ilijan plant would be forced to shift to liquid fuel as the plant had always scheduled its maintenance work to coincide with the Malampaya shutdown.

She said the Ilijan power plant’s constraint was that it has only one fuel line so when it shifts to liquid fuel (either pure diesel or biodiesel), the plant has to undergo cleaning operations due to the apprehension over water absorption.

This cleaning operations may result in additional plant downtime when using biodiesel, thus the total output of the power plant is assumed to be lower, Monsada said.