Newly commissioned 150-MW wind plant to beef up EDC’s profitability

It was a ‘ winner-take-all’ race in the award of feed-in-tariff (FIT) to renewable energy (RE) projects, and being first to reach finish line, the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) can now look forward to improved profitability that can be contributed by its newly-commissioned 150-megawatt Burgos wind power project in Ilocos Norte.

In an interview with reporters, EDC president and chief operating officer Richard B. Tantoco has indicated that this addition in their capacity portfolio will bring in 3.2 billion in revenues on the high side.

And on its full year income by 2015, that is seen contributing 5.0-percent based on the calculated level of generation of the wind facility.

“The Burgos (wind plant) is going to bring 10percent next year on the revenue and about 5.0percent on the net income,” Tantoco stressed.

The facility’s average volume of electricity generation, according to Tantoco, will likely be 420 gigawatt hours, “so on average that will be 370 to 380 GWh per year;” or an equivalent of 50MW baseload unit.

In a related development following the plant’s successful commissioning, developer EDC has stepped up to its $ 315 million financial closing for the project – a 15-year financing arrangement backed up by Danish credit agency’s Eksport Kredit Fonden. The mandated lead arrangers for the dollartranche are Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited; DZ Bank AG; ING Bank NV; Malayan Banking Berhad and Norddeutsche Landesbank Gironzentrale; while their local counterparts are PNB Capital and Investment Corporation and SB Capital Investment Corporation as arrangers; and joined by BDO Unibank Inc.; Land Bank of the Philippines; Philippine National Bank and Security Bank Corporation.

The system of awarding the 8.53 per kilowatt hour (kWh) for wind power projects as well as the corresponding out- of-consumers-pocket subsidies for other RE projects had been anchored as to which developer will first reach full commissioning.

The Department of Energy will issue the final certificate of endorsement (COE) as the ‘gold stamp’ that will enable RE project developers to avail of the fixed 20- year FIT incentives.

From the initial 150-MWdevelopment, the Lopez group indicated that it will not stop at that. It intends to scale up with wind farm installations to as high as 500MW in the next few years.

“Including Iloilo and the ones in Ilocos Norte, I think there’s a potential of about 550MW,” Tantoco said, albeit emphasizing that it “is going to take a long time. We have to wait for the feed-intariff.”

For now, he noted that the company would “just want to settle down and enjoy this project;” referring to the 150MW Burgos wind farm facility.