Alsons Power will funnel around $180 million in three years to work on two coal-fired power plants that will supply power to the Mindanao grid, its officials said yesterday.
Beginning 2017, Alsons Power will work on the 210-MW Unit 2 of the SEC plant and the 105-MW San Ramon Power Inc. (SRPI) next year. SEC’s is expected to be finished by 2019 and SRPI will be completed in 2020.
The projects will cost around $600 million, COO Tirso Santillan told reporters yesterday. Equity will fund the $180 million until SRPI’s completion.
The company will also work on two renewable energy projects in Sarangani, namely the 15-MW Siguil run-of-river project and a 20-MW solar farm.
Alsons head of planning Antonio Miguel Alcantara said the projects are still acquiring contacts, but construction is expected to start by the end of 2017.
Lower net income this year
Alsons Power Group will see a slump in its net income this year as two of its diesel plants have been converted into merchant plants, Santillan said.
The company’s 105-megawatt (MW) Sarangani Energy Corp. coal plant has been added for 2016 to ease the change brought by the shift of its diesel plants.
“We added Section 1 of SEC for 2016, which was a capacity non-existent in 2015,” Santillan said. The plant’s began operations in April 2016 and is fully contracted.
Last year, parent firm Alsons Consolidated Resources, Inc. posted a net income of P691 million, 90 percent of which came from its power unit.
Two out of three of Alsons Power’s diesel plants, the 100-MW Western Mindanao Power Corp. (WMPC) and the 55-MW Southern Philippines Power Corp. had energy conversion agreements (ECA) with the National Power Corp. which expired earlier this year.
Together with the 103-MW Mapalad Power Corp. (MPC), Alsons Power previously sourced its net earnings from its diesel plants.
*Photo from Shutterstock
