Aboitiz Power allots $150M for Tiwi-Makban upgrades

MANILA, Philippines - AboitizPower, the power generation arm of the Aboitiz Group, is investing roughly $150 million to increase the reliability and availability of the Tiwi and Makban geothermal facilities in Albay and Laguna, respectively.

The Aboitiz Group, through its subsidiary AP Renewables Inc., acquired the Tiwi-Makban plants in 2008 for $446.888 million.

AboitizPower president and chief executive officer Erramon Aboitiz said there is a possibility of expanding the plant’s capacity.

“We really have to see how feasible it is. I guess this will have to come from different proposals and feasibility study,” Aboitiz said.

He said it is possible to bring the capacity to over 460 megawatts from the current 400 MW.

“Right now we are producing a consistent 400 MW of power and when we took over, it was over 460 MW. I think there is an opportunity to at least bring it back to that level,” he said.

He said the company could partner with Chevron, through Philippine Geothermal Production Co., Inc., for the expansion project.

After acquisition and putting in fresh investments, AboitizPower increased Tiwi geothermal plant’s availability factors -- the number of hours the power plant is able to generate power over a certain period, divided by the total number of hours in a year -- by 24.73 percent to 97.83  percent from 73.10  percent prior to the acquisition, the company said.

The Makban geothermal plant’s availability factor also increased 15.3 percentage points to 97.52 percent from 82.49 percent prior to the acquisition.

Furthermore, AboitizPower brought down the forced outage rate to 1.67 percent and 3.55 percent for the Tiwi and MakBan geothermal facilities, respectively, from 2.06 percent and 3.81 percent before the acquisition.

AboitizPower is the holding company of the Aboitiz Group’s power generation, distribution and retail businesses. It is one of the biggest power companies in the Philippines, with plans to invest P125 billion in the power sector over the next five years.