Aboitiz Power seeks add’l supply deals for 300MW Cebu plant

Listed firm Aboitiz Power Corporation continues to knock on electricity end-users’ doors for additional power supply contracts that will shore up the revenue stream of its 300megawatt Therma Visayas, Inc. (TVI) coal-fired power plant in Toledo, Cebu.

Luis Miguel O. Aboitiz, chief operating officer of the conglomerate’s Corporate Business Group, has indicated that only 50-percent of the plant’s capacity has been underpinned by power supply agreements so far. This entails further efforts on their part to seek out much-needed additional supply deals.

The Toledo plant is targeted to reach full commercial operations in the second quarter of next year but, at that time, Aboitiz said its capacity “will just probably be half-contracted.”

The retail space of the restructured electricity sector is where competition has been raging at this point, but Aboitiz still auspiciously opts for new contracts for their Cebu plant from that segment of the consumers’ base.

“It’s mostly open access right now,” he said, when asked on the market prospects of the plant’s generated capacity – manifestly in reference to the Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) policy in the power sector that is still currently enforced on voluntary basis for those customers exercising their ‘power of choice’ on suppliers.

The other strategy being thought out by the company would be the shifting of power contracts to their Toledo plant once it comes on full stream next year.

“We have a lot of customers in Visayas who are being served by our plants from Luzon, so the moment the second unit of TVI comes in, we will assign those contracts closer to the customer,” Aboitiz said.

If that is concretized, he noted that the capacity of the Toledo plant will also end up almost fully contracted.