PNOC firm builds 1-MW hydropower plant in Ecija

RIZAL, Nueva Ecija  – Renewables Corp. of the Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC) started last week construction of a one-megawatt hydropower plant here.

PNOC Renewables president and chief executive officer Carlos Jose Gatmaitan referred to the project, located in Barangay Poblacion, as the Rizal Pampanga River irrigation system main canal hydropower, but he did not disclose its cost.

Last February, the PNOC and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) signed an agreement on the project that is expected to be operational by mid-2015.

“The groundbreaking of this hydropower plant is a concrete example of how coordination, proper facilitation, and obligation can do to advance our communal objective. For some, a one-megawatt facility is a minute solution to our ballooning energy demand and challenges. I beg to disagree,” Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said in a statement read by Renewable Energy Management Bureau chief Mario Marasigan during the project’s groundbreaking.

Petilla said, “We need to understand that no matter how small power facilities are, they exist for a purpose that is altruistic and noble.”

Rizal Mayor Rafaelito Andres expressed hope that the plant would lower electricity cost in his town.

Petilla said another hydropower project in Nueva Ecija is in the pipeline along the NIA’s Super Diversion Canal Lateral C in the Science City of Muñoz.

PNOC Renewables is the primary vehicle of the government in promoting and developing new and renewable energy sources to boost the country’s level of energy self-sufficiency.

It is developing 365 MW of potential renewable energy capacity either on its own or with public or private sector partners.

In a related development in Lingayen, Pangasinan, provincial resolutions 677-2014 and 678-2014 have been passed, authorizing Pangasinan Gov. Amado T. Espino Jr. to enter into an agreement with Team Sual Corporation (TSC) and San Roque Power Corporation (SRPC) in connection with the advance payment of real property taxes of the two facilities for the years 2015 and 2016. The resolutions passed by the Provincial Board accepts the offer of TSC and SRPC to pay in advance the 2015 and 2016 realty taxes on the power plant and related facilities and machineries of the Sual Coal-Fired Plant and San Roque Power Plant. -- With a report from Liezle BasaIñigo