Meralco’s hi-tech coal-fired power plant seen online in Sept

Manila Electric Co. expects an easing of the tight power generation capacity in the Luzon grid as its P56.2-billion, 455-megawatt San Buenaventura power plant in Quezon will be ready for commercial operation in September as scheduled.

Rogelio L. Singson, president of Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen), said in a briefing that a spate of yellow and red alerts declared for Luzon starting even before the summer months showed the urgent need for new power generation capacity.

Yellow means the reserve generating capacity is insufficient if power plants went on unplanned or forced outage. Red means electricity demand is likely to exceed available capacity.

“At MGen, the synchronization of our 455-MW San Buenaventura supercritical coal-fired plant to the grid was ahead of our schedule with full commissioning on target for September 2019, Singson said.

Supercritical power plants are among coal-fired facilities that use “high efficiency, low emission” technologies, which means they harness more heat out of coal compared to conventional coal-fired plants.

According to MGen, the San Buenaventura plant—which is located in Mauban town—is the first supercritical power plant in the Philippines, a status that was achieved in May, a month after getting connected to the grid.

This means that San Buenaventura is so far the most high-tech coal-fired power plant in the country.

Also, San Buenaventura has a power supply agreement with Meralco, which was approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission and is not among the bilateral contracts that the Supreme Court has ordered to be subjected to competitive bidding.

Further, Singson said that while MGen was waiting for the regulators’ official declaration of commercial operations for San Buenaventura, Meralco’s power generation arm was looking at opportunities to become a major player in the renewable energy business.

“There are currently close to 35 MW of renewable energy projects in the pipeline (for MGen),” he said.