Two binary plants to supply 46MW power in 2023–DOE
BY LENIE LECTURA – OCTOBER 28, 2022
from Business Mirror
THE additional geothermal power capacity that will come online starting next year will help the country achieve its renewable energy (RE) target, the Department of Energy (DOE) said Thursday.
DOE Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla said during the 3rd Philippine International Geothermal Conference and 19th Annual General Assembly Meeting of the National Geothermal Association of the Philippines (NGAP) that “the DOE envisioned more geothermal capacity to be added in the next succeeding years.
“As a matter of fact, by 2023, we are expecting additional capacities from two binary power plants the 29 megawatts (MW) Palayan Binary Power Plant located in Manito, Albay and the 17 MW Tiwi Binary Geothermal Project located in Tiwi, Albay,” Lotilla said.
Meanwhile, the 20-MW capacity from the Tonawon Geothermal Project located in the Province of Sorsogon is in the pipeline, he added.
“All these would significantly contribute to our (RE) targets in the power-generation mix to achieve 35 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040,” the DOE chief said. To date, Lotilla said, the country is now at 22 percent.
CREZ process
THE DOE has issued a policy that would increase the percentage of the utilization of RE for on-grid areas, including geothermal, from 1 percent to 2.52 percent. The increase in the utilization of RE in the country’s power generation mix would encourage more investors and end-users to develop and utilize domestic energy sources, Lotilla said.
He recognized that geothermal exploration is expensive and has a long gestation period of about four to six years. Uncertainty in developing geothermal sites is also high as only about 59 percent of drilled wells have sufficient resource for power generation.
“With geothermal energy’s exclusion from the FIT (Feed-In-Tariff) and in the absence of specific programs to spur its development, there was hardly any new geothermal capacity addition apart from what I have earlier mentioned,” Lotilla noted. As such, the energy chief said there is a need to scale up investments in the RE sector, including exploration and development of geothermal energy resources.
He cited the “competitive renewable energy zones,” or “CREZ,” as one way to help achieve the country’s goals of scaling up renewable energy generation on the power system.
The CREZ process identifies the most economic renewable energy resource areas so that transmission planning and expansion can accelerate their development.
Negros Island tragedy
THE CREZ initially identified 25 high-quality solar and wind resources across the Philippines with an estimated total capacity of 152,097 MW including the potential capacity coming from geothermal resources at 365 MW.
“We desire to avoid the tragedy of Negros Island where geothermal power is displaced by solar power and left stranded for lack of adequate transmission lines,” he said.
Further, the DOE conducts “open and competitive selection process” in identifying areas to tender or bidding. The DOE selects pre-determined areas with sufficient data that will enable the investors to “hasten” development. With assistance from the Asian Development Bank, the DOE is working on a “Geothermal De-risking Roadmap for the Philippines” to identify, evaluate and recommend geothermal pre-development stage de-risking strategies to assist the DOE in assessing and prioritizing policies and regulations that can increase geothermal development in the Philippines.
“In other countries various schemes for resource risk mitigation have made significant contributions to the development of their geothermal resources,” Lotilla said. “While we aspire that the ‘Geothermal Derisking Roadmap for the Philippines’ project would result in new geothermal capacity development within the next five years, this project will require all our collective efforts today, as a country, as we have unique circumstances compared to those countries with existing geothermal risk mitigation facilities.”
