Energy Development Corporation (EDC) will be spending p7-billion for the last wave of its rehabilitation program for its aging plants for the improvement of reliability and generating capacities by 2018.
Most of the capital expenditure this year will be allotted for the rehabilitation of the 112.5 MW Tongonan geothermal plant in Leyte, EDC president and COO Richard Tantoco said.
The two units of the Tongnan plant will shut down for 110 consecutive days.
“But then, there’s change in the whole turbines, some of the foundations, everything. So our drilling cost in the future and our work over cost are going to contract, it will have an increased output by 10 MW, decrease in steam consumption by nine percent,” Tantoco said.
EDC is adamant that efficiently-run geothermal energy is still commercially viable despite the lack of incentives on the horizon.
The Duterte administration has indicated that it does not favor a 3rd round of renewable energy Feed-in-Tariffs (FIT), preferring instead to focus on keeping prices down for consumers and industry.
Geothermal energy, which makes up 1,169 megawatts (MW) of EDC's total installed capacity of 1,457.8 MW, is not on the FIT list along with solar, wind, and biomass energy sources.
"I don't think the absence of incentives means it's the end, but we really need to do things differently in geothermal," said EDC president and chief operating officer Richard Tantoco at the firm's annual stockholders' meeting on Monday, May 8.
He noted that the most critical point is reducing operational costs, which EDC has been doing for the past few years.
EDC is adamant that efficiently-run geothermal energy is still commercially viable despite the lack of incentives on the horizon.
The Duterte administration has indicated that it does not favor a 3rd round of renewable energy Feed-in-Tariffs (FIT), preferring instead to focus on keeping prices down for consumers and industry.
Geothermal energy, which makes up 1,169 megawatts (MW) of EDC's total installed capacity of 1,457.8 MW, is not on the FIT list along with solar, wind, and biomass energy sources.
"I don't think the absence of incentives means it's the end, but we really need to do things differently in geothermal," said EDC president and chief operating officer Richard Tantoco at the firm's annual stockholders' meeting on Monday, May 8.
He noted that the most critical point is reducing operational costs, which EDC has been doing for the past few years.