The National Power Corp. (Napocor) plans to acquire diesel-fed facilities to provide additional power supply for Marinduque consumers.

In a statement late Monday, the state-run power firm said it will start the procurement process for the brand new modular generating sets (gensets) totaling five megawatts in September next year.

On top of the gensets, Napocor President Ma. Gladys Cruz-Sta. Rita noted that the company will also bid out the supply for oil storage facilities in the province, which is covered by the Small Power Utilities Group. (SPUG).

“Napocor will also purchase a 500,000-liter fuel oil storage tank in addition to our existing 300,000-liter fuel tank,” Ms. Cruz-Sta. Rita said in the statement.

“This will increase the total diesel fuel storage capacity of our power plant and will give us sufficient time for the turnaround of fuel deliveries,” she added.

To ensure power supply reliability in the province, Napocor will also embark on the transmission system improvement of the 49-kilometer, 69-kilovolt Boac-Torrijos transmission line.

“Brand new spare parts were also sourced out to extend the life of the three units of 1,224 kW (kilowatt) gensets for the existing Boac diesel power plant,” it said.

Instead of retiring these plant units, the gensets will serve as supply reserve for Marinduque.

The company earlier this year invested P37 million to replace fuel tanks in off-grid areas in a bid to boost the efficiency of 15 diesel plants.

Napocor had said replacing the old fuel storage tanks will rationalize fuel management of these facilities and will address issues hounding the utilization of fuel that is being procured by the government.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROGRAM EXPANDED

Meanwhile, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA), with the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP), is expanding an energy efficiency initiative to cover the IT industry, among other measures.

PEZA Director General Lilia B. de Lima said that they are planning to cover the information technology industry of the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector as part of the Energy Smart program once they finish covering the country’s manufacturing sector.

“We will focus on the manufacturing [sector] first because they use a lot of energy. After that we will do the BPOs,” Ms. de Lima told reporters after an ECCP forum on energy efficiency.

Henry J. Schumacher, ECCP executive vice president, said that they could see a significant impact from implementing energy-saving measures in the BPO sector as it has more than 500,000 people working in continuous daily operations.

Ms. de Lima also said that they will be working with economic zone locators in creating a “demand aggregation scheme.

“We will assist companies inside specific economic zones to aggregate their power needs and help negotiate with power generators for good power rates,” she said, noting that companies could gain more leverage if they were offering bigger power demands.

The ECCP’s Energy Smart program, launched in 2010, provides companies with power cost reduction and energy-related revenue generation measures to encourage investments in energy efficiency. PEZA and ECCP recently signed a memorandum of agreement that allowed the ECCP to facilitate the conduct of energy audits through its accredited service and technology providers.

The ECCP had said that investments made in energy efficiency could cut 30% off in energy consumption while returns on such investments could be short as six months and rarely exceeds three years.

Source: Business World, 13 August 2014