MARIVELES, Bataan — Two coal-fired power plants with two units each in Barangay Alas-Asin here are in full operation and continue to support the Luzon and Visayas grids.
GNPower Dinginin Ltd. Co. (GNPD) with net capacity of 1,336 megawatts and GNPower Mariveles Energy Center Ltd. Co. (GMEC) with net capacity of 632 MW, are both operated by Aboitiz Power.
GMEC became fully operational in January 2014 while GNPD began generating power in March 2021 and operated at full-load capacity on May 18, 2021.
Arcel Madrid, GNPD – GMEC assistant vice president for community relations, said on Thursday that their two plants have total capacity of 1,968 MW that is almost of the same capacity with the 21 power plants in the country that bogged down and caused the declaration of yellow alert.
“That is how big and important GNPD and GMEC are especially during this time that there is the yellow alert declaration. We were asked by the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines and the Department of Energy to monitor our operations,” he said.
“We are happy to share with you that we are fully operational as of today. In fact, ang aming GNPD Unit 1 ay operating na ng 176 consecutive days at Unit 2 ay 38 days of continuous operation, so walang outage na naganap. GMEC Unit 1 ay 20 full days na operating and GMEC Unit 2 is 74 days,” Madrid noted.
“We were asked by DOE and NGCP to maintain our operations to avoid shut down. Huwag naman sana mag-shut down ang GMEC at GNPD dahil ang sinu-supply nito ay halos equivalent sa currently kulang na kuryente. We are doing our best to continue to operate our plants 24/7,” he added.
As to the effect of El Niño to their two plants, Madrid said “We are using sea water for our operations and we are using coal as our fuel so our power plants are not directly affected.”
