A look at the Ambuklao Dam in Benguet

We were in the Pine City last Sunday for 3rd and final leg of our Renewable Energy Tour, sponsored by the Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC) this time to see the Ambuklao Dam in the mountains of Benguet Province. We met up in Baguio City with the other media group that went to see the Windmills of Bangui, Ilocos Norte to exchange notes. There is no doubt that the Cebu Media has been given one of the best educational tours regarding the various power sources in this country.

I have long heard about the Ambuklao Dam, but had no idea that it was only an hour’s ride from Baguio City or 36 kms away. The road to the dam is already very well paved, so you can now go there faster. One thing that we couldn’t help but notice as we were riding towards the dam was that many areas have been scorched by fire, even in the areas that are not populated. While the forest is still around, there should be more effort spent to ensure that those pine trees won’t burn to the ground!

Arriving at the Ambuklao Dam, we got a briefing from Site Manager Engr. Ferdie Villanueva of the SN Aboitiz venture that in June 26, 2008 won the US$ 289.4 million bid to rehabilitate the 75MW dam and upgrade it to 105MW. This package included the rehab of the 100MW Binga Dam, which is just downstream from the Ambuklao Dam. The water extracted from the Ambuklao Dam flows straight into the Binga Dam and is reused to add more power to this grid. How’s that for real efficiency!

This means that in the three-year period, SN Aboitiz has to do a lot of civil works, replace a lot of machinery including the electro-mechanical switches. The major water tunnel that feeds the turbine has already been badly silted; hence, a new intake tunnel is under construction. We toured the entire facility, including a visit to the 550-meter tunnel where the power turbines were located, some 150 feet below the bottom of the Agno River. It was my first time to go inside an industrial tunnel. This was undoubtedly made by an American firm, but today, we met with many Cebuano engineers and workers working for this project. This is Pinoy power!

What I did not know was that, the Ambuklao Dam project was started in 1956 and was considered Asia’s biggest engineering project. Indeed, the Philippines were really ahead in Asia in sourcing the Agno River for power generation. This dam supplied most of Northern Luzon and was the first of the many dams that the Philippine government constructed, like the Magat Dam, the Patabangan Dam and the Angat Dam.

Another interesting thing that many Filipinos do not know about the Ambuklao Dam was that way back in 1990 during the Baguio earthquake, certain structures in the Ambuklao Dam where destroyed, hence it shut down operations 20 years ago! Just imagine, Luzon lost 75 MW of power during the Baguio earthquake, yet it took the Philippine government so long to finally decide to have a private firm rehab and operate this facility?

All the time I thought that when Aboitiz Equities Ventures (AEV) and its Norwegian partners won the Ambuklao-Binga Dams that these power facilities were still operational and just needed to be brought up to speed with the current technology on hydro power. From what we saw, it is a monumental job to rehab the Ambuklao Dam.

What complicated the rehab program was Typhoon “Pepeng” which came from the heels of Typhoon “Ondoy” in October last year. Pepeng apparently brought a record rainfall into the Agno River basin to the point that water had to be released from the dam; so as not to compromise its structure. Then suddenly, it went to the other extreme, when last November, Benguet suffered a record dry spell, which we could still see around us.

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation program for the dam is in full swing. Replacement parts are already on the scene waiting for its installation. All their targets (including a million man accident free hours) are on schedule. Soon, the Ambuklao Dam will be fully operational and ease the power problems in Luzon. When that happens, the excess power from the Luzon grid can now be sent via submarine cable to the Visayas grid.

Looking at the humongous man-made Ambuklao Dam made many of us in the Cebu media ponder how the Philippine government in the 1950’s could think of embarking into such a gigantic infrastructure project like this dam. During the years of the Marcos Dictatorship, despite all the negatives that the opposition hurled against the Marcoses, they had something good going for the country’s power industry, a well thought-of plan to harness the many rivers in Luzon for a hydro plant. Yes, long-range vision included the entry of the Philippines to the Nuclear Club, which unfortunately for us, was scrapped by Pres. Cory Aquino who knew nothing about power.