Philippines advances Toledo coal power plant expansion

Philippines' Department of Energy (DoE) has approved the 340MW Toledo coal-fired power plant's system impact study (SIS), progressing the plant's expansion.

The plant is located in the Philippines city of Cebu and is owned by Therma Visayas, a subsidiary of private sector utility Aboitiz Power which owns several power plants across the country. The plant's first 170MW unit started commercial operations in April 2019, with the second 170MW unit starting up in May 2019.

Aboitiz aims to add another 169MW unit at the plant in the future, potentially raising the plant's capacity to 509MW and making it the largest coal plant in the Visayas grid. The study looks at the effects of integrating a power plant into the transmission network in order to determine if the grid can accommodate the additional load without compromising its safety and reliability, the DoE said.

The new 169MW unit is expected to consume between 650,000-700,000t/yr of coal, comprising mainly Indonesian imports which will be supplemented with domestically produced coal, Aboitiz said.

The expansion project is exempt from the Philippines' moratorium on new coal plants, as it had already secured its environmental compliance certificate (ECC) and other permits before the moratorium was implemented in 2020, Aboitiz said. The DOE said the project can proceed as it is covered by a provision in the moratorium which exempts existing power plants that have firm expansion plans in place and existing land provisions.

Business groups in Visayas have welcomed the development, saying that the Visayas grid needs additional baseload capacity to support the region's economic growth, especially as businesses continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

The Visayas grid is the smallest grid in the country based on available capacity. The grid's available generating capacity currently stands at 2,605MW, with peak system demand reaching 2,038MW, according to data from state-owned power transmission grid operator NGCP.

These thin supply margins make it difficult to attract large-scale industrial investment in the region and leave the Visayas grid at risk of rolling blackouts owing to insufficient capacity, negatively impacting the region's economic activity, business groups in Cebu and Mandaue city said.

By Antonio delos Reyes