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MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Energy is urging the private sector to continue investing in the power industry.
More power generation capacity is needed by 2017 and 2018, particularly in Luzon and Visayas, thus the need for more investments.
“We urge more private investments in the energy sector and the timely installation of the committed projects,” said DOE Undersecretary Donito Marcos during the Energy Investment Forum on December 4, where he delivered the keynote speech on Energy Investment Opportunities.
From 2015 to 2020, there will be 20 power projects in Luzon that are coming online as committed by various private sector proponents, with a total capacity of 2,397 megawatts (MW).
Apart from the committed projects, there are 9,044MW of indicative power projects in the pipeline.
In the Visayas, 11 projects with a total of 675MW are expected to be installed until 2020, while 18 projects with a total capacity of 601MW are in the indicative stage.
Marcos added these power plants will be mostly renewable energy projects.
Additional capacity needed
“But despite the capacities coming in, we will still be needing additional capacity by 2017. This opens an opportunity for the private sector to venture into the power business,” said Marcos.
In Mindanao, 16 projects with a total of 1,920MW will be installed, and 25 indicative projects have been identified. “We would like to see these indicative projects to progress into committed power projects in the years to come,” added Marcos.
The country has a total installed capacity of 18,445MW with a dependable capacity of 15,838MW.
To date, 34% of the country’s installed power plants are provided by coal, followed by oil at 17%; hydro at 19%; natural gas at 17%; geothermal at 10%; wind at 1%; biomass at 0.7%; and solar at 0.47%.
In terms of capacity mix of each grid, the Luzon grid has a total installed capacity of 13,516MW which is predominantly dependent on coal. Since January 2014 up to November 2015, a total dependable capacity of 450MW was added to the grid with around 229MW renewable energy.
Meanwhile, 39% of power plants running in the Visayas grid are geothermal. Coal comes next at 30%, followed by oil at 21%.
In the Mindanao grid, the total installed capacity is 2,237MW and the dependable capacity is 1,860MW. Majority of the power plants in the region run on hydro sources at 45%. Oil-based power plants come in next at 38%, followed by coal at 11%.
“In summary, we need more capacity in the Luzon and Visayas grids… We hope to see the infusion of investments in the coming years to be able to provide for reliable supply of electricity in the country,” said Marcos. – Rappler.com
Electric substation in night-time lighting image from Shutterstock
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