AboitizPower upbeat about 2020 after redressing power plant snags
By Lenie Lectura -November 8, 2019
from Business Mirror
Aboitiz Power Corp. expects to perform better next year after enforcing corrective action measures on its power plants that encountered technical snags in the past months.
“We don’t expect these outages will continue. We’ve put all corrective actions already and so with that we expect a good performance with regard to availability in 2020,” said company Chief Operating Officer Emmanuel Rubio, who will assume a new post starting next year as the power firm’s president.
Some of these plants include the 420-megawatt (MW) Pagbilao unit 3 and GN Power Mariveles.
“We’ve been beset by plant outages, especially during the first half of the year and during summer when usually prices are high. What I would like to highlight is most of the outages we’ve suffered from this year, we’ve learned from them and we’ve collected a significant portion of the issues that came out from these outages,” said Rubio.
The company is optimistic that 2020 will turn out to be a better year since all of its power plants would be fully operational.
“We are very bullish. For next year, we have new capacities that will be operating for the full year.
“TVI (Therma Visayas Inc.) has two units and that’s 300 MW; one unit started running April, and the other one in August. By next year that is all available by whole year.
“GN Power is 1,336 MW. One unit is expected to come in—probably April [at the earliest]. The other unit is toward the fourth quarter of 2020,” Rubio said.
He added that FiT (feed-in-tariff)-eligible facilities, such as the 68.8-MW hydro plant in Manolo Fortich and the 19-MW La Trinidad hydro plant, which was recently commissioned, will be operational for full-year 2020.
“I am very bullish for next year. We have new plants coming in. Dinginin (GN Power Dinginin Ltd. Co.) at 1,336 MW plus the hydro plants,” said Rubio.
The power firm has set a target of registering 4,000 MW of attributable capacity in 2020 from the current 3,200 MW.
“We will definitely hit the goal of 4,000 MW by next year. We have sold 23 terawatt hours to the grid. We are expecting to hit over 30 terawatt hours by 2029,” Rubio added.
He said the company is “aggressively expanding” its energy portfolio and pursuing projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, “with focus on hydro, solar” while looking at opportunities in gas. “By 2029, our mix would be 50:50 thermal and renewable energy,” said Rubio.
The company’s third-quarter earnings dropped by 36 percent to P4.8 billion after posting non-recurring losses of P340 million. Core profit declined by 35 percent to P5.1 billion.
“It has been a tough year for AboitizPower with the supply issues that resulted in the high cost of replacement power for our customers. The company has also generated lower revenues from the spot market due to challenges that caused some of our power plants to shut down,” said Rubio.
