Quezon power plant soon to be operational

MAUBAN, Quezon -- The 440-MW power plant of Quezon Power (Philippines) Ltd. Co. (QPL) located at Barangay Cagsiay I, this town, will soon be fully operational and is expected to help bring down electricity rates by P0.07 per kilowatt-hour (kwH), according to QPL general manager Gregory Daul.

Preparing for routine delivery of electricity to the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) service area, Daul said the QPL plant began commissioning activities in October last year and the power generated in conjunction with these tests has since been periodically delivered to the Luzon grid.

Richard Collins, QPL construction project manager, said the work poses very little danger of automatic load dropping (ALD) as recently experienced in the Luzon grid.

According to Collins, the National Power Corp. (Napocor) and Meralco are routinely advised of QPL's commissioning activities in order that Napocor can provide enough reserve generating capacity to instantly replace the loss of either the QPL plant or, for that matter, the loss of any other plant in the system.

"Neither we, Meralco, nor Napocor are leaving things to chance, "Collins assured, as he confirmed that close coordination and monitoring have been established with Meralco and the NPC, the system operator of the grid.

QPL built the Mauban plant to augment the present distribution capacity of Meralco, which supplies some 80 percent of the Luzon retail market requirements.

A top Meralco official was earlier quoted as saying that the full operation of the QPL plant "will result in approximately P0.07 per kwh savings."

QPL is a joint venture of four companies namely: Intergen Energy Inc., Global Power Inc., Ogden Energy Inc. and PMR Power Inc.

Bechtel Overseas Inc. built the plant for the consortium. Designed and engineered with state-of-the-art environmental technology that exceeds today's stringent standards, the QPL plant is expected to cost some $810 million.