Bronzeoak Philippines Inc. will delay the completion of the first of its three biomass power plants in Negros after deciding to increase the capacity of the plants.
“We are finishing our first of its kind biomass plant hopefully by second quarter next year. First quarter was our original target,” Bronzeoak director Don Mario Dia said.
Bronzeoak is working on the San Carlos, Manapla, and La Carlotta with a combined capacity of 70 megawatts (MW).
The San Carlos plant’s capacity, originally planned at 18 MW will be expanded to 19. 99 MW.
The plant’s boilers had to undergo reconfiguration and available feed stock had to be retested.
“The other [reason for the delay] is we retested the fuel source. Will we do pure sugar cane trash or we will mix it with others so we will have a backup of fuel source, like wood chips, coconut husks, rice husks or napier grass. So we went back to redesigning of the boiler with the supplier,” Dia said.
The company official assured that when the San Carlos plant is finished, the two other biomass plants will follow after every year.
“But if we have more equity, we can advance it,” he said.
The project, in partnership with the International Finance Corp. which invested $161 million for the plants, is expected to qualify for the biomass feed-in-tariff (FIT) with an installation target of 250 MW.