Marubeni completes power line from San Roque to Luzon grid

Japanese power giant Marubeni Corp. has completed the construction of a 230-kilovolt (kV) transmission line that will link the San Roque multi-purpose power plant to the Luzon grid, National Transmission Corp. (TransCo) president Alan T. Ortiz said.

Ortiz said Marubeni, majority owner of the San Roque facility, has financed the P220 million transmission line project which will be formally inaugurated by mid-July this year.

Ortiz said the new line would replace the temporary line being used by the power project.

"This project will maximize the power that would be delivered from San Roque to other parts of Luzon. This may even help the power facility in using its whole capacity," he said.

Ortiz noted that at present, San Roque is running only at 80 MW below its capacity of 345 MW because of the inability of the temporary transmission line to transmit the power being generated from the facility.

The TransCo chief also noted that if the P220 million transmission line project will be completed and San Roque will be running at full capacity, the National Power Corp. (Napocor) could avail of a much cheaper power from the power plant.

San Roque Power Corp (SRPC) has a multipurpose project and its primary feature is a 200-meter-high, 1.2 kilometer-long embankment dam on the Agno River spanning the municipalities of San Manuel and San Nicolas, Pangasinan, nearly 200 km north of Metro Manila.

The San Roque Dam is located on the lower Agno River of Pangasinan Province, in the Cordillera region of Luzon island in the Philippines.

If completed, the 200 meter-high San Roque would be the largest private hydropower project in Asia.

Electricity generated by the dam will be primarily used to power industrial activity and the burgeoning mining industry in northern Luzon.

Preparation of the site began in 1998, and construction is slated for completion in 2003. San Roque is the third dam to be constructed on the Agno river: the first two, Binga and Ambuklao, were built in the 1950s.

SRPC is 92.5 percent owned by Marubeni after it bought the 51 percent stake from US-based energy firm Sithe Energies Inc. and remaining 7.5 percent by Kansai Electric.