EDC planning additional geothermal project in the Philippines
By Alexander Richter | Think GeoEnergy | July 28, 2021
EDC plans an additional geothermal power project at BacMan in addition to ongoing construction of two geothermal plants.
Bacon-Manito geothermal power plant, Philippines (source: EDC)
During a press event in the Philippines, the country’s Energy Development Corp. (EDC) announced preparing two additional power projects with an investment volume of P20 billion (ca USD 396 million).
EDC currently is building two new geothermal power plants, as we reported. Construction for the 28.9-MW Palayan ORC binary plant within the Bac-Man geothermal facility has started construction in June this year and expected to be operational by the second half of 2022. The 3.6 MW new Mindanao 3 unit will be EDC’s first geothermal brine recovery plant to go online in 2022. It will help generate an additional 3.6 MWe of power from an existing geothermal field that utilizes the waste geothermal brine available from Mindanao 1 and 2 steam power plants.
Now, EDC is planning to commence construction of an additional geothermal power plant within the next 12 months, so EDC president and COO Richard Tantoco.
This is part of plans for the Aya 100 MW Aya pumped-storage project in Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija and the 20-MW Tanawon geothermal power plant in Bicol.
The Tanawon plant in Bicol is part of the expansion of the Bacon-Manito (BacMan) geothermal power plant in the Bicol region in the next four years.
The Palayan binary plant, is expected to expand the overall power generation capacity of the existing geothermal plants 120-MW Bacman I and 20-MW Bacman II.
The Mindanao 3 binary plant, which is targeted to be completed in the first half of 2022, expands the 52.3-MW Mindanao I and 50.93-MW Mindanao II geothermal power plants in Mt. Apo.
Tantoco said the Bicol projects would use new technology called radial outflow turbines, a first in the Philippines, which will produce geothermal power at a more efficient level.
“They are much more compact, much more efficient and they use a lot less cement when they’re being constructed. Even the footprint of the radial outflow turbine plants, which we are buying from an Italian manufacturer called Exergy, is much greener than tech known as recently as 10 to 15 years ago,” he said.
Source: Think GeoEnergy