One-stop shop put up for power industry

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd. (MHPS) has committed to reducing the downtime of power plants in the country by opening a maintenance and monitoring support center.

The Global Service Center (GSC) in Alabang, Muntinlupa would serve as a one-stop shop for client needs, such as management of spare parts for thermal power plants and emergency manpower dispatch.

With the establishment of a control center here in the country, the downtime of the plants is expected to be reduced by 80-90 percent because damaged parts would easily be repaired, said Masao Ishikawa, managing director and chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd.

The service center is patterned after the remote monitoring centers in Takasago Hyogo Prefecture in Japan in 1999 and in Orlando, Florida in 2001.

Besides housing a service solution center and remote monitoring center, the GSC also has a training center. It currently has about 20 employees.

The remote monitoring center, which harnesses the latest information and communication technology, would focus on early fault detection and optimize outage management to help reduce maintenance cost and unplanned downtime. The training center would  feature advanced simulators for coal-fired plants to enhance the skills of client engineering teams.

In a separate interview, MHPS president and CEO Takato Nishizawa said the company chose the country as the center’s location beacause of the ease of doing business here.

He said the company aims to achieve orders worth $20 billion by 2020 because of the massive demand from the power generation sector. In 2015, the company accepted $15 billion worth of orders.

Trade Undersecretary Rowel Barba welcomed the development.

“We in the Department of Trade and Industry are in full support of this long term efforts to grow and cultivate local talents [and] the technical transfer and training programs as we continue to execute our two-pronged mission enabling business and empowering consumers through keen improvements in our major output deliverables,” Barba said in a speech during the launch on Friday.

“With this new location in the Philippines, the department is counting on the Global Service Center to make a massive contribution not only in supporting the energy and power sector but to our trade and industry as well,” he added.