TAIPEI – The Philippines is not behind in terms of adopting the latest technology for power plants, an official of a power station here said.
Linkou Power Deputy Plant general manager Ru-Chin Chou said the Philippines is not far behind Taiwan, among others, since it already has a supercritical coal-fired power plant.
He was referring to the 500-megawatt San Buenaventura Power Ltd. Co. supercritical coal-fired power plant in Mauban, Quezon that was inaugurated on October.
The power plant is the first in the country and is the most advanced among the coal-fired facilities since it uses more modern technology that requires less coal and more efficient than the standard coal-fired facilities.
It uses the high efficiency, low emissions (HELE) coal technology that allows the power plant to have about 70 percent less emission compared to a conventional coal-fired power plant.
Chou said efficiency rate of the Philippines’ first supercritical power plant is “near the advanced ones” and is at par with the 44.93-percent plant efficiency of the Linkou Power Plant’s 2,400-megawatt three-unit ultra-supercritical power plant in New Taipei City.
He stressed that Philippine power stakeholders just need to choose the right engineering, procurement and construction contract that will boost capacity and efficiency of plant facilities.
Chou conducted Tuesday a briefing here for officials of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), Meralco PowerGen (MGen) and some Filipino journalists.
Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga said they learned a lot from the briefing and the plant tour provided by Linkou Power Plant officials.
He is grateful that their counterparts from Taiwan shared their best practices, such as responsible operations and tapping the community around the power plant to further make the power plant’s operations more holistic. (PNA)
