The move comes after TPCH, a listed company, recently successfully bid for a government contract to build and operate three biomass power plants with a combined capacity of 26 megawatts, out of an overall 36MW quota set for three provinces in the deep South.
The planned Nonthaburi project forms part of the company’s five-year expansion plan for electricity production, under which it targets reaching a combined 200MW of electricity generation in 2020, from 142MW currently.
“We are confident in our capability [to manage 3.8 million tonnes of waste], which will give us an opportunity to win the waste-to-energy power plant contract from Nonthaburi Provincial Administrative Organisation [PAO],” managing director Cherdsak Wattanavijitkul said at the company’s “Opportunity Day” event yesterday.
He said Siam Power held a 10-year landfill concession from the Nonthaburi authorities covering 137 rai (22 hectares) of land for 3 million tonnes of waste, plus 818,812 tonnes from a nearby public landfill site on another 40-rai plot.
The area is located next to Siam Power’s 75-rai plot, on which the waste-to-energy plant would be built, he added.
Cherdsak said the combined 3.8 million tonnes of waste could be converted into 1.7 million tonnes of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) used for electricity production, resulting in an RDF reserve for 28 years if power-plant usage came in at the expected 60,000 tonnes per year.
Siam Power is currently filing a bid for the waste-to-energy power-plant contract, which includes a planned application submission date for the associated power-purchase agreement to be signed next month, he explained.
The awarding of the contract is scheduled to be announced on November 17, ahead of a formal signing of an agreement with Nonthaburi PAO next March.
The organisation would buy the electricity generated at Bt5.78 per unit via the FiT (feed-in tariff) format, the managing director said.
Cherdsak declined, however, to go into detail about the power-generation capacity of the planned facility, as this would depend on the project conditions set by the PAO.
To ensure further recurring income, he said, the company was also preparing to bid for additional biomass power-plant projects under the next quota – for a total of 400MW – for the South.
TPCH also hopes to sign an agreement for an 80MW hydro-power project in Laos next month, which would take about four to five years to complete before commercial operations could commence, he said.
Meanwhile, the company this year expects to double last year’s revenue of Bt304.9 million, thanks to full operation of three biomass power plants – at Chang Raek and Mahachai in Nakhon Si Thammarat, and at Maewong in Nakhon Sawan – with a combined output of 30MW and an average FiT of about Bt4.54 per unit, the MD said.
As to the three biomass power-plant projects in the southernmost provinces for which it recently won the bidding, Cherdsak said they were expected to commence commercial operations in the final quarter of 2018, with an FiT rate of Bt3.12-Bt3.42 per unit.
TPCH currently has 11 power plants under operation with a combined 142MW of electricity production: 10 biomass plants generating 132MW, and one waste-to-energy power plant with a capacity of 10MW.
A further five projects are under development with a combined generating capacity of 82MW.
The company posted Bt50.17 million in net profit for the second quarter, up 804 per cent from the same period last year. Net profit for the first six months came in at Bt81.46 million, 10 times higher than in the first half of last year.