Local rice millers on Friday inaugurated a project designed to convert rice husks churned out by their rice mills into electricity that would power up the city and neighboring communities.
The millers’ new firm, the San Jose City I-Power, intends to generate 9.9 megawatts of electricity, said Edgardo Alfonso, president of San Jose City Rice Millers Association.
The initiative is considered the first of such scale using organic fuel. Power plants fueled by rice husks have been piloted in Isabela and Mindanao but their use has not been maximized. The project’s groundbreaking rites were attended here by Energy Secretary Jose Almendras, who said the project “can serve as [a] model for others [who may be] interested in using renewable energy to generate electricity.”
Alfonso, who is also San Jose I-Power’s chief operating officer, said the feasibility of putting up the rice husk-powered plant was validated by a 2004 study conducted by the Energy Facility of the Asean Center for Energy and the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
“With strong support from our local government unit here, we thought of putting up a power plant using rice hulls discharged from our milling machines,” Alfonso said.
“We will be using 110,000 metric tons of rice husks annually to power the plant. We will be paying P1,000 for every metric ton of rice husk that is delivered to us,” he said.
Since there is an excess of 50,000 tons of rice husks here and many more are available from rice mills in nearby areas, another generating plant will be put up soon in the 5-hectare complex of the corporation in Barangay Tulat here, he said.
“We are happy that we will be able to respond well to the government’s call for the use of renewable energy particularly in power generation,” he said.
“We are also happy that our city can now be assured of steady supply of electricity and that in the long run, we will be helping the farmers by offering them higher buying price for their palay,” he said.
