Highest Falls in Mindanao to Host New Hydropower Project

Hedcor Inc has begun the construction of a new hydropower plant in the Philippines. This in order to address the rise in power demand on the Philippines’ second largest Island of Mindanao, and has added another project to the Philippines 34 hydroelectric power plants.

The 7MW hydropower plant will be located at Tudaya, and will harness power from the Sibulan River and Tudaya falls, a 100-meter falls within Mt Apo National Park considered the highest falls in the area.

The new hydropower plant will be constructed between two barangays in Sta Cruz, Davao del Sur. It is set to rise downstream from Sibulan Hydro Plant B, 200 meters away from Davao-Cotabato road. The power plant will be completed by 2014, and will provide more than 400 jobs for locals.

Hedcor Inc has invested P1 billion into the project, and parent company AboitizPower aims to add 54 MW to the grid from Hedcor’s hydro plants, and a further 300 MW from the clean coal facilities of their other subsidiary Therma South Inc.

AboitizPower president Erramon Aboitiz hopes that “the Tudaya project will provide the Davao area, and Mindanao as a whole, with reliable, dependable and competitively priced power”. The generating facility is expected to deliver 40.5 GWhs—equivalent to more than 7,000 homes—yearly to Davao del Sur Cooperative (DASURECO).