Victorias City, Negros Occidental”•Victorias Milling Company Inc. allocated P2 billion for a 40-megawatt co-generation biomass power plant.
“VMC is positioning itself to be in the power business through a co-generation plant using bagasse as raw materials for its source of energy,” said VMC president and chief operations officer Eduardo Concepcion.
The plant which will be located within the company’s headquarters in this city is expected to be completed by September.
Construction of the power plant is ongoing and commercial operations are expected by September 2017.
“We will be able to export to the grid about 25 MW. The 15 MW will be for our own use,” said Concepcion.
“We are also applying this under FIT [feed-in-tariff],” said Concepcion.
Under the Renewable Energy Law, renewable energy projects are given incentives under FIT. Biomass projects that qualified under FIT would have a fixed per kilowatt-hour rate of P6.63 for at least 20 years.
Concepcion said the company was also looking at constructing phase 2 of the power plant.
“If things go right, we can construct phase 2 [of the biomass plant]. Same capacity but the power that will be exported [to the grid] will be just 20 MW since part of the power from phase 2 will electrify the turbines to convert them to use electric power so that steam from the sugar mill will be concentrated on the power plant to maximize power generation we will use to run the mill,” Concepcion said.
VMC also revived its distillery to produce ethanol.
“Under the law, bioethanol needs to be sourced from local produce so the demand and the price is high compared to potable alcohol that could be imported,” said VMC chief manufacturing officer Linley Retirado.