Aboitiz Power inks eng’g contract for power plant project

MANILA, Philippines - Aboitiz Power Corp. has signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Korea’s Hyundai Engineering Co. Ltd and Galing Power Energy Co. Inc. for its wholly-owned subsidiary Therma Visayas Inc.’s (TVI) 300-megawatt (MW) power project in Cebu.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, AboitizPower chief executive officer Erramon Aboitiz said the agreement was finally sealed after two months of negotiations.

Upon signing the EPC contract, TVI will be issuing a notice to proceed to perform design engineering and detailed physical data collection.

Aboitiz said this is in preparation for the construction of the P41-billion, 300-MW net capacity baseload power plant in Sitio Looc, Brgy. Bato, Toledo City, Cebu.

The project’s generating equipment will consist of two 170-MW steam turbines and two circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boilers.

“We look forward to working closely on this project with our EPC contractor and the local community to ensure we deliver a quality power plant on time,” Aboitiz said.

According to the AboitizPower official, this project will increase the power capacity of Cebu.

“This will assure Cebuanos that we will have adequate and competitively priced baseload power supply in the island by 2017. This is a very important project for the Visayas grid,” he said.

The Department of Energy forecasts 2016 to 2018 to be a critical period for the Visayas grid.

The TVI project has been fasttracked to meet the looming power deficit. AboitizPower is also currently working toward financial close with local financing institutions.

TVI is targeted to go online by the third quarter of 2017. The project is expected to create over 1,500 new jobs during construction, and about 150 new permanent jobs during operation.