Napocor inks $5.8-M lease contracts for gensets

The National Power Corp. (Napocor) has signed lease contracts with foreign power firms GE Energy Rentals and Aggreko International Power Projects (AIPP) worth a combined $5.8 million.

The contracts will allow Napocor to lease generator sets from the two firms to be deployed in Palawan and Panay island.

Under the contract, Napocor will rent from GE Energy Rentals a 15-megawatt modular-type diesel generating set for $3.4 million over a period of one year. The genset will be deployed at Napocor’s Irawan substation in Puerto Princesa, Palawan.

AIPP, on the other hand, will lease out to Napocor a 10-MW generator for the Panitan substation in Capiz. The contract will also have a one-year effectivity period, valued at $2.4 million.

Based on their respective contracts, GE Energy Rentals and AIPP are required to have the generators commissioned on or before March 7, 2004.

In 1999, GE Energy created GE Energy Rentals in response to a growing demand for temporary distributed power in the commercial, industrial, and oil and gas markets. It currently operates in five continents around the world.

AIPP, meanwhile, is the rental unit of Aggreko, which handles multi-megawatt temporary power projects worldwide. Boasting of the most extensive fleet of containerised generators, load banks, transformers and ancillary equipment, AIPP operates in 27 countries around the world.

Napocor said the deployment of the generators is expected to improve the reliability of power supply in Palawan and beef up the power reserves of the Cebu-Negros-Panay grid.

Currently, Palawan has a power supply of 39.4 MW, of which only 26.5 MW are dependable due to line constraints. With GE Energy Rental’s genset directly connected to the Irawan substation, Napocor will be able to avoid these line constraints and thus make the entire 15-MW capacity of the generator dependable.