Meralco seeks early approval of 455-MW Quezon power plant

MANILA, Philippines — Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is appealing to regulators to approve its power plant in Quezon province to augment supply in the Luzon grid, which would lose about 600 to 900 megawatts (MW) of capacity during the shutdown of the Malampaya gas facility next month.

Based on projections of the country’s largest power distributor, several power plants would go on scheduled maintenance which have capacities of about 600 to 900 MW, Meralco president and chief executive officer  Ray Espinosa said.

“We have alerted the Department of Energy (DOE) already that there are scheduled outages already in October, as early as the first week,” he said.

The Malampaya gas field is scheduled to go on maintenance shutdown from Oct. 12 to 15.

To help boost supply, Meralco is pushing the commercial operations of the 455-MW (net) San Buenaventura Power Limited Co. (SBPL) power plant in Mauban, Quezon.

However, the power project has yet to receive clearance from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to start commercial operations due to issues on water rights.

“We were targeting San Buenaventura to go online, commercial operation date on Sept. 15, but the ERC has not yet issued the provisional authority to operate and the COC (certificate of compliance). Without those, San Buenaventura can not go online and supply commercial power,” Espinosa said.

Espinosa said SPBL could  use the water rights issued to Meralco by the National Water Regulatory Board.

“The plant is ready to go online already. It has already performed well the stability tests. So I’m really hoping that this issue on water rights, which I dont think should be an issue, should be resolved,” he said.

To resolve the water rights issue, Meralco had also sought the help of the DOE for the SBPL project to go online since it is part of the agency’s power development plan.

“We asked them to help us also to resolve the issue of water rights,” Espinosa said.

However, the DOE said there is enough power supply during the Malampaya shutdown. Moreover, contingencies have already been put in place.