EDC to restore Leyte power plant

MANILA, Philippines - Energy Development Corp., the Lopez-owned geothermal company, is eyeing to restore all the units of its 650-megawatt Unified Leyte Power Plant by August.

The power facility in Leyte, the single biggest source of electricity in the Visayas, shut down after Super Typhoon Yolanda damaged some units when it struck in some parts of the Visayas in November last year.

“We should have all the units back in operation around August and possibly earlier depending on the availability of spare parts which is dependent on manufacturing lead time,” said EDC president Richard Tantoco.

EDC has been able to repair the damaged facility in phases, successfully dispatching 292 MW to the Visayas Grid to date.

“For Unified Leyte, we are now producing a total of 292 MW,” Tantoco said. 

Tantoco said the facility would definitely be back online at full capacity this year.

Last week, EDC said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) that the company has been able to run another unit of the Malitbog facility, allowing the plant to produce additional capacity of 75 MW.

“EDC has successfully energized another unit of the Malitbog Power Plant, with an additional capacity of 75MW. Said unit is now on start-up mode and under reliability and other tests,” the EDC said in its disclosure.

In early January, EDC restored the first unit with a capacity of 75 MW in coordination with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, the country’s power grid operator.

The company also restored the Tongonan Power Plant in addition to the previously restored Upper Mahiao and Leyte Optimization Plants.

The Unified Leyte plants consist of the 125-MW Upper Mahiao, 232.5-MW Malitbog, 180-MW Mahanagdong and 51 MW Leyte optimization plants. 

Another geothermal facility is the 112.5-MW Tongonan power plant. 

In late November, EDC has partially re-commissioned the plant and was able to dispatch 57 MW into the Visayas grid after successful reliability runs.

Because of the damage sustained by its facilities, EDC has formally written the National Power Corp. (Napocor) regarding the Force Majeure provisions of its power purchase agreement.