History remembers the time when Filipino soldiers bravely fought side by side with Koreans in thier joint struggle for freedom and domocracy in the Korean War of the 1950s. Through the year, the cooperation between Korea and Philippines continues to advance and strengthen in the economic, political and cultural spheres.
These ties have prompted the Korea Electric Power Corporation(KEPCO), a globally competitive and leading electric utility provider which contrils the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity in Korea, to respond to the Philippine Goverment's call to increase the country's power supply, develop and utilize its indigenous resources.
KEPCO participated in, and subsequently won, the international biddings for the Rehabilitation, Operation, Maintenance and Management (ROMM) of the 650MW Malaya Thermal Power Plant in Pililla, Rizal in May 1995 (implemented by KEPCO Philippines Corporation or KEPHILCO); and the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) of the 1200 MW Ilijan Combined-Cycle Ilijan, Batangas Natural Gas Power Project in October 1996 (implemented by KEPCO Ilijan Corporation or KEILCO).
The rehabilitation phase of the 20 year old Malaya plant was completed in October 1998, 10 months ahead of schedule. The successful recovery of the plant's original rated generation capacity of 650 MW is equivalent to the building of a new 220 MW power plant but at a much lower cost. In addition, the thermal efficiency was improved by an average of 4.5%. The Malaya plant curently provides stable and reliable electricity to the Luzon Grid.
The Ilijan Plant was principally designed to operate as a base-load unit using natural gas sourced from the Malampaya gas fields in Palawan with diesel as back-up fuel. The Project is in line with the Philippine Government's thrust of utilizing its indigenous energy resources, particularly natural gas. Cited by POWER Magazine as one of the top 12 power plants of the world, the plant boasts of state-of-the-art, highly efficient 501G gas turbines (known of having one of the highest efficiency ratings among all industrial gas turbines in the world) that exhaust into a three-pressure reheat natural circulation heat recovery steam generators.
KEPCO Philippines continues to explore new projects and consequently address the impending power shortage in the Visayas region as it takes on the construction of a 200 MW Circulating Fluidized Bed Combustion (CFBC) Power Plant in Naga, Cebu. The plant shall utilize the CFBC boiler-type technology whose emission system is proven to be environmentally-sound by over 500 CFBC units currently operating safely worldwide. The Project is implemented by Kepco SPC Power Corporation, a joint venture of KEPHILCO and SPC Power Corporation under a Build-Operate-Own (BOO) scheme.
These outstanding milestones manifest the state-of-the-art technological excellence and competence of KEPCO. With its significant contribution of a stable and reliable power supply in the Philippines, KEPCO Philippines has emerged as a major player in the Philippine energy industry.
KEPCO's Philippine operations, with the KEPHILCO and KEILCO power plants, currently provide approximately 16% of Luzon's installed generation capacity or 12% of the Philippines' installed generation capacity.
