First Gen Corporation is increasing the country’s supply of electricity by bringing to commercial operation seven new power facilities with a total capacity of 83 megawatts (MW) by the end of the year.
First Gen president and COO Francis Giles B. Puno said the seven power projects are being developed by renewable energy subsidiary Energy Development Corporation (EDC). Of the seven, four are geothermal power plants with a combined capacity of 82.6 MW, while the remaining three are battery energy storage system (BESS) projects with 40 megawatt-hours (MWh) of total capacity.
Puno said the new geothermal projects will require P24 billion in investments; and the BESS projects, another P5.3 billion, or a total of P29.3 billion. The bulk of the funding for the projects came from the P60 billion that EDC set aside under its capital expenditure (capex) program last year.
“We completed the 29-MW binary plant–Palayan and it just started operating right when there’s a need for supply. That’s new capacity that’s come in,” noted Puno, “We continue to invest. Half of the P60 billion capex goes to drilling, the other half goes to new builds. Geothermal is complicated, you have to build new wells and then work over existing wells.”
The P6.7-billion Palayan geothermal plant, one of the seven new power projects of the Lopez-owned firm, is located inside EDC’s Bacon-Manito (BacMan) geothermal facility in Bicol.
Meanwhile, the P2.9-billion, 5.6-MW geothermal power plant in Bago City, Negros Occidental, is set to commence operation in the third quarter of this year.
Two other geothermal power projects — the P6.6-billion, 20-MW Tanawon power plant also located in BacMan and the P7.8-billion, 28-MW Mahanagdong plant in EDC’s existing Leyte facilities — will begin operating by the fourth quarter of 2024.
On the other hand, the three BESS projects will go into commercial operation by the end of 2024. These are the P2.2-billion, 20-MWh BacMan BESS in Bicol; the P1.5-billion, 10-MWh Tongonan BESS in Leyte; and the P1.6-billion, 10-MWh Negros BESS.
“We hope that adding these modest capacities into the grid from clean energy sources will help ease our country’s need for more power supply without creating stress to the environment,” Puno said.
First Gen currently has 1,622 MW of renewable energy (RE) generation capacity sourced from geothermal, hydro, solar and wind. In addition to RE, other First Gen power plants run on natural gas, the cleanest form of fossil fuel, whose use it pioneered in the country over 20 years ago, bringing the total capacity in the company’s current portfolio to 3,639 MW.
The completion of the seven projects by end-2024 will bring the total installed RE capacity of First Gen to 1,705 MW. Together with its natural gas plants, total installed capacity would reach 3,722 MW by the end of the year, solidifying its position as the country’s largest generator of low-carbon power.
First Gen aims to have 13,000 MW (13 gigawatts [GW]) of total capacity by 2030, or an additional 9,500 MW in natural gas and RE. Of the additional capacity, roughly 7,500 MW will come from new RE projects that will also include hydro, solar and wind.
