By Lenie Lectura – January 29, 2017
from Business Mirror
ALSONS Consolidated Resources Inc. (ACR) expects its power projects to provide a bigger boost to revenue and profit, its top official said.
“We are hoping the completion of our power project will be able to generate at least three times the current earnings of ACR,” ACR Chairman and President Tomas Alcantara said.
He did not provide figures, saying “we are just closing the books now.”
The Alsons-controlled Sarangani Energy Corp. (SEC) has just started construction of a second 105-megawatt (MW) facility. It will start operating in 2019. SEC’s Section 1, another 105-MW facility, started delivering power in April last year.
Aside from the SEC plant, the Alsons Power Group is also set to start construction this year of another 105-MW base-load plant in Zamboanga City under its San Ramon Power Inc. (SRPI) subsidiary. The plant is expected to be operational by 2020.
The company is also investing $650 million in renewable energy for the next six years, starting with a 15-MW run-of-river hydro project in Siguil River, also located in Maasim, Sarangani.
For SRPI, Alcantara said there are several engineering, procurement, construction groups that manifested interest to construct the power facility.
“There is a Chinese company and a Korean firm, but we are not prepared to name them,” he said.
Also, SRPI is now working on supply contracts for the output of the power plant.
“We are just perfecting the PSA [power supply agreement] contracts that we have. As far as rates are concerned, we already have an approval from the ERC [Energy Regulatory Commission]. We are just working on the principal cooperative that would be the principal off-taker for the plant,” Alcantara said.
The Alsons Power Group currently has a total capacity of 258 MW.
“With this [SEC2] plant, it will now be 363 MW. We are, thereafter, starting two new plants. The first one would be the twin of this plant. It will be located on the other side. The Block 2 and the one we have in Zamboanga City are the other two. This will give us a total of 573 MW by 2020,” he said.
The Alsons Power Group currently operates three diesel-power facilities: the Southern Philippines Power Corp. power plant in Alabel, Sarangani; the Western Mindanao Power Corp. facility in Zamboanga City; and the 103-MW Mapalad Power Corp. plant in Iligan City.