Typhoon Rammasun wreaks havoc on cooling towers in plant of Philippine energy firm

Thankfully, spares are available for repair work.

Ocular inspection conducted by personnel of the Philippines' Energy Development Corp on their Bacman geothermal project on 16 July revealed damage caused by typhoon Glenda (international code Rammasun) to the cooling towers of 55-MW unit 1 and 55-MW unit 2.

According to a research note from Maybank Kim Eng, repairs have to be made but EDC said there are spares available for this type of contingency.

The report noted that EDC has not yet disclosed how long the down time for units 1 and 2 will be but it is believed this likely will be shorter than the five months experienced by the Leyte-based power plants last year in the wake of typhoon Yolanda (international code Haiyan) because of available spares.

Here's more from Maybank Kim Eng:

Other typhoon-related work was the clearing of roads inside the Bacman concession as a result of landslides.
Our 2014 estimate for the Bacman project is conservatice, factoring in only 30-45% capacity factor which translates to roughly four and five months of operation respectively for units 1 and 2.

As of end-June, unit 2 had been operating for about four months and unit 1 about a month.

Meanwhile, we forecast 20-MW Bacman unit 3 to operate for eight months and it has been online since Jan with down time of about one month for replacement of its generator.

Furthermore, we have a 30% discount to our DCF-based target price of PHP7.25 to factor in executions risks.
Consequently, we are making no changes to our forecasts or target price at this time.