Alcantara’s Sarangani plant starts operations
The 105-megawatt second unit of the Alcantara-led Sarangani Energy Corporation’s (SEC) coal-fired power facility has formally kicked off commercial operations on Thursday, October 10, the company has announced, thereby shoring up power supply in Mindanao grid.
The plant’s initial unit of the same 105MW capacity reached commercial operations in 2016 – and the second unit’s completion marks the full concretization of the 210MW power facility as committed to its customers via power supply agreements.
As noted by Fernando V. Corrales, Alsons Power vice president for project management, the Sarangani plant’s second unit had already “completed all the necessary commissioning and testing stages.”
The last step to that process, it was emphasized, had been the issuance of the facility’s certificate of compliance (COC) by the Energy Regulatory Commission. The COC serves as the license or a permit of a power plant for it to commence commercial operations.
For the unit 1 of the plant, the customers it catered to had been mostly endusers in the General Santos-Sarangani area; while for the newly commissioned Unit 2, its expanse of supply provision shall include those in Koronadal, Cagayan de Oro, Dapitan, Digos and other key areas of Mindanao.
“With the impending start of commercial operations for SEC 2, the combined SEC plant will be able to help provide up to 210MW of baseload power to help fuel the economies of major population centers such as Butuan, Cagayan de Oro, Dapitan, Digos, Dipolog, General Santos, Iligan, Kidapawan, Koronadal and Pagadian,” Corrales said, adding that “this is our way of contributing to the economic rise of Mindanao.”
Over the course of the project’s development, total financing funneled for the facility’s construction up to completion had been $570 million, according to the project developer-firm.
The asset is majority owned by Alsons Thermal Energy Corporation (ATEC), which is a partnership between Alcantara group’s Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. and Global Business Power Corporation that is now majority owned by the conglomerate led by businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan.
For the Sarangani coal-fired power project in particular, the other key shareholder is Toyota Tsusho Corporation of Japan.
Onward, the Alcantara group is advancing two more key power projects – one is another 105MW coal-fired power project in Zamboanga City; and the other is the 15MW Siguil hydropower venture which will be its jump off point into renewable energy investments.