Agus-Pulangi power plant rehab deferred

MANILA, Philippines - The rehabilitation of the Agus-Pulangi hydropower plants in Mindanao has been pushed back to the third quarter of the year as the government had to thresh out thorny details surrounding the plan, the National Power Corp. (Napocor) said.

In an interview with The Star, Napocor president Froilan Tampinco said the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) had to finalize the terms of reference (TOR) for the rehabilitation, which was initially targeted in the first quarter of the year.

“They (PSALM) are now looking at bidding it possibly in the third quarter of the year,” Tampinco said.

PSALM is the enttity tasked to manage and dispose Napocor’s assets and liabiltiies.  

Napocor is part of the technical working group that is crafting the TOR.

Under the previous TOR, financing will be done by the winning bidder but this time, Tampinco said, the government will provide the necessary financing to make the deal more attractive to the bidders.

The hydropower plant’s dilapidated facilities have been partly blamed for the power crunch in Mindanao. The plant supplies more than 50 percent of Mindanao’s power requirement.

The 59-year old facility has severely deteriorated and has been supplying only 570 megawatts from almost 1,000 megawatts when it was commissioned in 1953.

The rehabilitation aims to bring the plant’s capacity back to 982 MW.

Under the planned rehabilitation of the facility, proponents will replace the main equipment of the two generating units of the Agus 6 power facility. The rehabilitation is soon to extend the facility’s lifespan by another 30 years and its generating capacity expanded.

The Pulangi hydropower plant, meanwhile, is a facility in Bukidnon, which began operating commercially in 1985.

The Agus-Pulangi hydropower complex is critical to ensuring adequate power supply in Mindanao, which in the summer months experienced two to ten-hour rotating power outages.

The rehabilitation could start within three months after the bidding and could last for 30 months or until 2014.