EDC targets full capacity of Bacman plants

MANILA, Philippines - Lopez-owned geothermal company Energy Development Corp., is aiming to hit the full capacity of 130 megawatts for the Bacon-Manito geothermal power plants by next year, the company top official said.

At present, the geothermal plant, located in Bacon, Sorsogon and Manito in Albay is running at 73 MW due to technical problems and tests runs.

“We are bringing online the full 130 MW of power before the 2015 supply shortage in the Visayas,” EDC chairman Federico Lopez said.

He said the two large 55 MW units would have new Toshiba hots steam paths or turbine rotors. The company has also installed a brand-new generator in the smaller 20 MW unit.

In an earlier disclosure, EDC said Units 1 and 2 with a capacity of 55 MW each went on unplanned outage last July 15 as a result of damage caused by Typhoon Glenda.

For now, the plant’s Unit 2 is still offline, with the cooling tower restoration works still ongoing.

“The unit is expected to be in operation in October 2014,” EDC said.

The facility consists of Bacman I, 2 X 55 MW, and Bacman II, 2 X 20 MW.

In February, EDC commenced commercial operations of the Bacman plants after successfully rehabilitating the facility, which had been shut down since 2009.

However, EDC had to repeatedly shut down the units since February because of maintenance works and damage.

In May 2010, EDC acquired the Bacman plant from the government with a winning bid of $28.25 million in an auction conducted by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), the agency tasked to handle the privatization of state-owned National Power Corp. (Napocor) assets.