Repairs on Mindanao plant finished by Oct – EDC

Publicly-listed Energy Development Corp. (EDC) expects the repair works in its Mindanao I geothermal power plant to be completed on or before Oct. 15 this year.

The 52-megawatt (MW) Mindanao-based geothermal facility is run by Mindanao 1 Geothermal Partnership (M1GP), a unit of Japanese trading giant Marubeni.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), the Lopez controlled EDC said “per the assessment of the damage conducted and the discussions with the contractor engaged for the repair, M1GP anticipates that the transformer repair will be completed and that the transformer will be ready to be synchronized to the grid on or before Oct. 15.”

M1GP’s 75-megavolt ampere transformer bogged down last July 29. The company said the unit that was damaged was inspected last Aug. 15.

EDC has been advised based on an internal inspection conducted on the transformer that it would only be brought back to the grid middle of October.

“We will update the PSE of further details as soon as the same are available to EDC,” it said.

The $80-million M1GP is under a 10-year energy conversion agreement with EDC supplying the steam free-of-charge and pays the M1GP a fixed amount for converting the steam to electricity. EDC then sells the output to National Power Corp.

EDC’s Mindanao geothermal production field provides steam to Mindanao 1.

The former owner of EDC, PNOC-EDC, has entered into several power generation businesses through the build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme, one of which is M1GP.   — Donnabelle Gatdula