AboitizPower unit switches on Tiwi binary plant
TIWI—AP Renewables Inc. (APRI), a subsidiary of listed Aboitiz Power Corp., broke ground on its 17-megawatt (MW) binary geothermal plant here in this town in Albay, furthering the aggressive push towards renewable energy.
The binary plant is being constructed within the site of the Tiwi geothermal facility, the country’s first geothermal plant. APRI is targeting to complete its construction by end-2023.
The planned facility will be built from the ground up with an entirely new binary plant system, pipes and transmission line. It also has no emissions into the environment as its binary fluid operates in a closed-loop system.
Geothermal energy, a form of renewable energy, comes from the earth’s heat and is produced by drilling production wells into the ground to tap high temperature fluids from geothermal reservoirs.
“Residual heat from the hot brine side of the geothermal production process, otherwise unutilized before reinjecting back to the earth, is harvested to produce electricity through the binary geothermal power plant,” it explained.
APRI mentioned earlier the concept of recovering heat from the geothermal brine and converting it into electricity is a novel solution that improves its overall thermal efficiency.
“The Tiwi Binary Power Plant is a facility designed to extract the recoverable heat from the geothermal brine that is processed in a closed-loop system where no harmful gas or liquid is being emitted nor any waste products are discharged to the atmosphere, said APRI president and COO Jeffrey Estrella.
“This is as much of an achievement for AboitizPower as it is for our partners, especially the good folks from Ormat Technologies, Desco, and our friends from the Philippine Geothermal Production Company (PGPC),” AboitizPower chief renewables officer Jimmy Villamoran said.
The binary plant will inject another 17 MW of cleaner energy into the Luzon grid, added Estrella.
For APRI’s parent firm AboitizPower, this will further its aspiration of building an additional 3,700 MW of renewables or three times its current renewables portfolio by 2030 and strike a 50:50 balance between its renewable and thermal capacities.
AboitizPower had disclosed more than 1,000 MW of disclosed and ongoing RE projects, including solar, floating solar, hydro and onshore wind. It was exploring various fundraising activities to bankroll RE projects in the pipeline.
