Core Profit Of AboitizPower Nearly Triples In January-March

BY LENIE LECTURA – APRIL 29, 2021
from Business Mirror

The improvement in the availability of its coal power facilities, higher water inflow of its hydro-power unit and higher spot sales increased Aboitiz Power Corp.’s core profit to P6.2 billion at end-March, up 197-percent year-on-year.

These improvements offset the depressed demand for power brought about by the pandemic.

Also, the power firm was able to claim liquidated damages for the delay in the construction of GNPower Dinginin Ltd. Co. and received the final payment for business interruption claims resulting from the GNPower Mariveles Energy Center Ltd. Co. outages in 2020.

“Our first quarter results are very encouraging. We intend to keep this growth momentum by continuously working towards our availability and reliability targets. We are excited about GNPower Dinginin getting very close to commercial operations. We look forward to our incoming capacities, especially renewable energy, which will be our primary focus in the next 10 years,” said AboitizPower President and CEO Emmanuel V. Rubio.

The first unit of the Dinginin plant in Bataan with 668MW capacity is targeted for commercial operation within this year. The second unit of the same capacity will be commercially available in March or April next year.

“We will be able to synchronize by this weekend all the way to June; and another further tuning, then after that, the reliability and performance runs leading to COD (commercial operation date) of Unit 1,” said Rubio.

Aboitiz Power is targeting to grow its capacity to more than 9,000MW in 10 years by hitting a 50:50 balance between its renewable and thermal portfolios, exploring overseas opportunities, and venturing into gas power projects.

At end-2020, the power firm recorded 4,429MW of capacity. Of which, 79 percent was thermal and 21 percent renewables.

The company has lined up a number of renewable energy projects to help meet its goal.

“Whether it’s solar, whether its wind. But mainly for the renewable energy projects that we have, a significant portion obviously will come from solar. But in the end, the main constraint with that would be land—and he who has land will win,” said Rubio.

Also, the company has plans to put up floating solar power facilities. “We feel that we have a very valuable asset in our reservoirs. These are our hydros in Magat, in Ambuklao, in Binga where we can consider putting up sizeable floating solar capacities moving forward.”

The power firm is also engaged in generation and distribution businesses.

Power generation capacity sold from January to March this year increased by 3 percent to 3,558MW, compared to 3,445 MW in the same period in 2020. Energy sold increased by 8 percent to 6,130 gigawatt-hours (GWh) for the first quarter of 2021, compared to 5,675 GWh for the corresponding period in 2020.

The energy sales of the distribution business declined by 8 percent to 1,308 GWh during the first three months of 2021, compared to 1,429 GWh in the same period last year. This was driven by lower energy consumption from the commercial and industrial customer segments.