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Seven investor groups interested in the Limay power plant have
submitted the required pre-bidding documents within deadline, the
Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp. said in
a statement Thursday.
PSALM said the two local and five foreign
companies comprising the seven participants have been conducting due
diligence since May 21 and had attended the pre-bid conference
yesterday to discuss procedures for the as is-where is sale of the
620-megawatt combined-cycle power plant. The winning bidding,
however, has the option to convert the facility into a base-load
plant fired by natural gas.
A combined-cycle power plant such as the Limay
plant generates electricity in two ways. A combination of bunker and
diesel fuel is primarily used to power its gas turbines. To improve
fuel efficiency, the plant utilizes the heat of exhaust gas from the
gas turbines to boil water inside the boiler, which produces steam
that will drive the steam turbines.
The bid date for the Bataan-based power asset is
scheduled on July 30.
PSALM said that since Limay operates as a
peaking plant, no power supply allocation or contract sweetener
would be attached to the sale. This means the prospective owner will
trade the plant’s power output through the Wholesale Electricity
Spot Market.
PSALM is mandated under the Electric Power
Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA) to sell the government’s
plants to spur competition in the power sector in hopes of driving
down the country’s power rates, which is the second highest in the
region next to Japan.
-- Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo
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