Published April 15, 2018, 10:00 PM By Myrna M.
Velasco
It is an ironic twist, but the
Philippines target of 15,304 megawatts of renewable energy (RE) capacity into
its power system until year 2030 under the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS)
will also entail rolling out more oil-fired facilities as back-up or provider
of ancillary services.
Essentially, that will negate the
country’s aspiration of really “greening its energy mix” and the claims of many
RE developers that they are the saviors of “Mother Earth”, because the
intermittency facet of some technologies would be matched by what are deemed as
‘dirty counterpart technologies’ with high rate of heat-trapping emissions such
as diesel or bunker-C fuel fired power facilities.
The wish of the Department of Energy
(DOE) is for natural gas, hydro or battery storage to become the ‘ancillary
services’ provider that could save the system from frequency regulation upsets
potentially triggered by the on-and-off generation of variable renewable energy
(VRE) technologies.
“To integrate RE into the system
better, we need more flexi plants,” Energy Undersecretary Felix William B.
Fuentebella has noted.
He expounded that flexi plants could
either be gas-fired generating facilities, hydro or the more advanced coal-fired
power facilities that are deemed to have more flexible range of generating
capacity. The major consideration, Fuentebella said, would be “the ability of
the plants to immediately start up, ramp up and ramp down.”
The energy official added “gas is just
one of them… so if we have coal capability ramping up and down, like super
critical technology, then we’ll give it a go. We’re technology neutral, we’re
just saying that the capacity of the plants should be more flexible.”
Taking off from the ‘technology
neutral standpoint’ of the DOE, it can be gleaned clearly from industry
players’ preparations that their preferences to-date are installations of
oil-fired facilities as back-up capacity to RE’s unreliable electricity
generation.
Battery storage is also being
dangled into the RE development scene, but cost remains a deterring proposition
at this point, hence, investors are not really that keen yet on taking the
plunge on that technology option.
For gas-fired generation, the major
questions thrown to government are the sourcing of gas supply and how serious
the blueprinted liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals really are in
getting concretized.
Hydro technology, absent a pumped
storage, will also have cyclical generation issues – such as de-rated capacity
when demand peaks at summer time.
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