Aboitiz breaks ground on Albay plant
BY LENIE LECTURA – JANUARY 18, 2023
from Business Mirror
Aboitiz Power Corp. (AboitizPower), through its subsidiary AP Renewables Inc. (APRI), broke ground for its new 17 megawatt (MW) binary geothermal power plant in Tiwi, Albay.
The power project will be built from the ground up with an entirely new binary plant system, pipes, and transmission line. Construction is targeted for completion by the end of 2023.
It is located within the 1.5-hectare of land where the Tiwi Geothermal Power Plant, the first and oldest geothermal power plant in the country.
“The Tiwi Binary Power Plant is a facility designed to extract the recoverable heat from the geothermal brine that is processed in a closed-loop system where no harmful gas or liquid is being emitted nor any waste products are discharged to the atmosphere.
The design will produce an additional 17MW gross generated electricity – an additional source of clean energy to the Luzon grid,” said APRI President Jeffrey Estrella.
Estrella and Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Mario Marasigan led the groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday afternoon.
Geothermal energy, a form of renewable energy (RE), comes from the earth’s heat and is produced by drilling production wells into the ground to tap high temperature fluids from geothermal reservoirs. Residual heat from the hot brine side of the geothermal production process, otherwise unutilized before reinjecting back to the earth, is harvested to produce electricity through the binary geothermal power plant.
Officials said the concept of recovering heat from the geothermal brine and converting it into electricity is a novel solution that improves its overall thermal efficiency. In addition, the binary plant has no emission to the environment as its binary fluid operates in a closed-loop system.
The project is part of the company’s goal to grow the portfolio of its RE brand, Cleanergy, by the end of the decade.
AboitizPower will build an additional 3,700 MW of RE, growing its capacities to 4,600 MW or three times the company’s current renewables portfolio by 2030. The company said it has around 1,000 MW of disclosed RE projects and is on its way to achieving its targets.
APRI delivers 290 MW baseload power from its two facilities in Tiwi, Albay and the areas of Bay and Calauan in Laguna and Sto. Tomas, Batangas.
