Japanese buy out IMPSA, US firm in CBK power plant
Friday, January 19, 2007
By MYRNA M. VELASCO
The Electric Power Development Company (JPower) of Japan along with its partner Sumitomo Corporation that bought the equity shares of IMPSA Asia Ltd. and Edison Mission Energy in the Caliraya-Botocan-Kalayaan (CBK) hydropower plant, will be pursuing capacity expansion of 360 megawatts for the facility.
This was announced by Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla in a press conference called to assess the country’s gains from the recently-concluded 12th Asean Summit in Cebu City.
"There’s a potential expansion for 2 units of 180 megawatts each. They plan to do it in coordination with NPC (National Power Corporation)," the energy chief noted.
The Department of Energy (DoE) estimates that brownfield capacity utilizing hydro would command an investment of $ 1.0 million per megawatt; which means that the planned Kalayaan expansion would be requiring fresh capital outlay of $ 360 million. The CBK facility’s installed capacity is 761 MWs.
"CBK Power has indicated to us that it will go into a voluntary feasibility study for the expansion of the existing CBK hydro plant. This is a significant expansion plant, considering that it is located in Luzon. Our initial talks have been for a plant to be constructed on a merchant plant basis without any power purchase agreement," the DoE chief said.
He further related to media that J-Power sent him a formal letter indicating their plan to undertake a feasibility study for the planned capacity expansion.
"They will be sending a mission by February. This (study) will likely be funded by JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency)," Lotilla noted.
The capacity expansion will be for the proposed Kalayaan Unit 3 of the CBK complex. Upon the entry of the Japanese investors in 2004, this undertaking has already been lined up among the indicative projects to plug capacity shortfall in the Luzon grid by 2010 to 2011.
Due to the overcapacity situation then, however, plans got stalled. This time though, Lotilla believes that the Japanese investors will already pursue this project seriously.
J-Power is a Japanbased electrical power utility company with interest on developing power sources and building transmission lines. It has participated in power projects totaling to 16,000 megawatts (MW) in 72 plants in 7 countries.
A major portion of its plants are 5,000 MW of hydroelectric plants with seven of them as pumped-storage hydroelectric plants similar to the CBK facility.
The energy department is earnestly working on improving the power industry’s business climate so it can entice fresh investments to meet the country’s electricity demand growth beyond 2011.
As could be gleaned from the power development blueprint for Luzon, the government would need to lure some P46 billion worth of capital to finance some 23 potential hydropower sites; for the identified indicative capacity within the grid.
The over-all investment required for Luzon grid over the next 10 years would total around P438.5 billion, based on the updated Philippine Energy Plan. (MMV)
posted by philpower @ 7:23 AM,
