EDC temporarily shuts down 112.5 MW unit at Leyte plant
Tongonan, Leyte Geothermal power plant, Philippines
Alexander Richter
8 May 2015
One of the units at the Tongonan geothermal power plant had to shut down due to its age. EDC has a planned upgrade for the unit next year.
Local news sources from the Philippines report that one of the units at Energy Development Corp.’s (EDC) 112.5 MW Tongonan geothermal power plant in Leyte “went on emergency shutdown due to issues related to the age of the facility” yet officials from EDC stated that the “impact will be minimal.”
According to the same sources, Richard B. Tantoco, EDC president and chief operating officer, said in a text message yesterday that there was an outage that affected one 37.5-MW power plant unit.
“The remaining two units are still operating. The units are old and this is why we keep a spare, which is being installed now,” Mr. Tantoco said.
Asked about the impact of the outage on EDC’s operations, Mr. Tantoco said: “Revenue loss is minimal.”
Upgrades to the power plant units are planned for next year, which are planned for along side better cooling towers and equipment to prevent damage like 2013’s typhoon Yolanda which took a few plants offline and impacted EDC’s bottom line “by P 1 billon”
Source: Business World Online
