EDC acquiring new eqpm’t for BacMan plant

MANILA, Philippines - Lopez-owned Energy Development Corp. (EDC) said it needs to acquire new equipment for its Bacon-Manito (BacMan) geothermal plant in Albay after cracks were detected in the turbines of Unit 1, EDC said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

In an update on the status of BacMan’s Units 1 and 2, EDC said a permanent solution to the problematic units would be to replace the equipment with brand-new turbine rotor and diaphragms.

EDC has already ordered the necessary equipment from Toshiba.

“These will be installed on Unit 2 in the fourth quarter of 2014 and in Unit 1 in the first quarter of 2015,” EDC said.

In the meantime, EDC said it is considering an interim solution, which will follow the same methodology already employed for BacMan Unit 2’s steam turbine rotor.

“BacMan Unit 2’s steam turbine rotor is undergoing repair and re-certification at Sulzer Turbo Services facility in Indonesia and is estimated to return to service in the second quarter of 2014,” EDC said.

EDC said it has decided to extend the shutdown of BacMan’s Unit 1 announced in early September after a third-party inspection detected hairline cracks in two turbine blades of Unit 1.

“For this reason, EDC management has decided to extend the shutdown of BacMan Unit 1 while an interim solution is carried out,” it said.

In June, EDC president Richard Tantoco said BacMan Unit 2 is still down and may take time for its operations to resume.

In all, the cost of resuming the operations of all three units would amount to at least $100 million, according to data from EDC.

In February, EDC commenced commercial operations of the Bacman plants after successfully rehabilitating the facility, which had been shut down since 2009.

In May 2010, EDC acquired the BacMan plant from the government with a winning bid of $28.25 million in an auction conducted by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), the agency tasked to handle the privatization of state-owned National Power Corp.