Islanders see renewable energy as solution to daily brownouts

By Fernan Gianan Inquirer Southern Luzon SAN MIGUEL, CATANDUANES —The daily brownouts, especially those that occur in the mid of work or in the deep of the night, have so numbed residents and local businessmen that only silent curses could be heard. PHILIPPINES: Construction plans for proposed 19 Mw hydropower plant, PHILIPPINE NATIONAL OIL CO. (PNOC) [Philippines) - Order #: 107804.: An article from: ... & Plant Operations in the Developing World This month, they are hopeful relief is coming as two new privately-owned hydropower plants begin delivering on the promise of reliable and cheaprenewable energy. The multimillion-peso power generation facilities of the Sunwest Water and Electric Co. Inc. (Suweco) will be switched on this month in the towns of San Miguel and Caramoran. An affiliate of the Sunwest Group of Companies chaired by Bicolano businessman Elizaldy S. Co, Suweco intends to supply half of the island’s energy requirement of 6.5 megawatts (MW). The company’s P314-million hydropower plant in Barangay Solong in San Miguel has a rated capacity of 2.1 MW while its P213-million plant in Barangay Hitoma in Caramoran has a rated capacity of 1.5 MW. Jose Sylvestre Natividad, Suweco president, said these facilities will help alleviate the decade-long power problem in Catanduanes. According to engineer Edwin Tatel, cluster head of the Catanduanes Grid of the National Power Corp.’s Small Power Utilities Group, the maximum system demand last July was 7 MW during peak hours, with an off-peak demand of 5 MW. Catanduanes, with its 232,000 inhabitants, has a power demand that grows 10 percent annually. Its local power cooperative, the First Catanduanes Electric Cooperative Inc., has 33,000 member-consumers. Power supply Presently, Tael says, the grid’s generating system consists of two diesel power plants in Bato and Viga, the Balongbong hydropower plant, Power Barge 110, four mobile gensets rented from Monark and a 3.6-MW bunker-fuel genset operated by the private company Catanduanes Power Generation Inc. However, of the total rated capacity of nearly 20 MW, only half is being generated due to frequent shutdowns of the old diesel gensets. The three-decade-old Balongbong hydropower plant, on the other hand, produces only 1 MW out of its rated capacity of 1.8 MW due to low water intake at the forebay as a result of the prolonged El Niño phenomenon. Last summer, it was operated for only three hours a day as it experienced the lowest water level since it was built by a Chinese company in 1978 during the Marcos regime. Tatel says that at present, 70 percent of the total power generation of the grid is produced by fuel-fed power plants, with Balongbong accounting for the remaining 30 percent. With the commissioning of its two hydropower plants, Suweco will seek to overturn this ratio into 60:40 in favor of hydroelectric power. Learning affected Agnes Doblon, principal of the Paraiso Elementary School in San Miguel town, says the power outages affect the learning environment of the students. She says whenever brownouts occur, teachers and students would grope in the dark but they could not cancel classes or the students would be left behind. “For the past two years, we didn’t have electricity during our graduation rites. Our students marched without music. We called out names of the graduates without a sound system,” Doblon tells the media who were covering Sunwest’s distribution of bags and educational supplies last July 22. There was also a brownout that same day. On the other hand, Vice Mayor Mary Ann Teves says the hydropower facilities would be a key to development in the fifth-class municipality. “We are thankful because the Suweco power plant will not only provide a stable supply of electricity, it could also bring revenues to our town. Soon, when power is stable, more investments will come. We will no longer be a sleepy town,” Teves says. A small-scale hydroelectric power plant for the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico: Final report Mitigating climate change Natividad says that since the hydropower plants produce renewable energy, it will help save the environment and mitigate the impact of climate change. Tatel agrees, as the power to be generated by the company’s hydropower plants would help reduce the national government’s fuel subsidy of P79 million a year for the Catanduanes grid’s rental of the four Monark mobile gensets. The government has called for individual power producers or private investors to venture into renewable energy production through hydroelectric, windmill, solar and other means. In 2012, another hydropower plant with a rated capacity of 2.4 megawatts will be opened in the villages of Progreso and Paraiso in San Miguel, Catanduanes. The commissioning of the Suweco projects would likewise allow NPC to decommission its rented gensets by the end of the year and its diesel power plants in the next two years. Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer August 15, 2010.