Aboitiz Power eyes commercial start of Sibulan power facility by August

MANILA, Philippines – Aboitiz Power Corp. (APC), the power generation arm of the Aboitiz group, expects its 42.5-megawatt (MW) Sibulan hydropower project to go on stream by August this year.

APC said the run-of-river hydroelectric power plant in Sibulan, Sta. Cruz, Danao del Sur being undertaken by its 100-percent owned subsidiary Hedcor is still ongoing.

The project entails the construction of two cascading hydropower generating facilities tapping the Sibulan and Baroring rivers.

These facilities, APC said, can generate an estimated 212 million kilowatthours of clean and emissions-free energy annually.

The power output from these plants will be sold to Davao Light and Power Corp. starting August 2009.

Hedcor now operates 19 hydropower plants with a total installed capacity of 113 MW and an average generation of 354 gigawatt-hours of clean energy annually.

In May 2008, a wholly-owned subsidiary, Hedcor Sibulan, obtained a P3.5-billion loan facility from a consortium of local banks to finance this project. 

More than 90 percent of its generated power is sold to National Power Corp. while the remaining 10 percent is sold to DLPC , San Fernando Light and Power Co., Benguet Electric Cooperative and Philex Mining Corp.

It has so far generated some 2,569 gigawatt-hours of clean energy since 1985.

This has prevented the release of about 265 million kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if the same amount of energy were produced making use of coal.

It has also generated foreign exchange savings worth P11.8 billion if the same amount of energy were sourced from imported oil products.