By Lenie Lectura - March 26, 2019
THE Energy Regulatory Commission
(ERC) has approved a feed-in-tariff allowance (FiT-All) of P0.2226 per
kilowatt-hour, lower than the proposed P0.2932 per kWh application of the
National Transmission Corp. (Transco).
FiT-All is billed to all on-grid
electricity consumers, which appears as a separate line item in power
distributors’ bills. The amount is meant to cover payments to renewable-energy
(RE) developers who are assured of a fixed rate per kWh for electricity
generated by their projects over a period of 20 years.
Transco is the administrator of the
FiT-All fund. It manages the FiT-All rate that is used to pay the eligible RE
developers under the FiT system.
In its decision, the ERC authorized
Transco to collect a FiT-All rate for 2018 equivalent to P0.2226/kWh, lower by
P0.0706/kWh than what Transco asked for. The approved amount is also lower than
what consumers are currently paying for which is P0.2563/kWh FiT-All rate.
“The ERC-approved FiT-All is lower
vis-à-vis Transco’s proposed rate, and will reflect a P0.0337/kWh reduction
from the current P0.2563/kWh FiT-All rate. The variance is attributed to the
discrepancy in the plant capacities used by Transco and ERC in computing for
the FiT-All, among others,” said ERC Chairman and CEO Agnes VST Devanadera.
The ERC used as basis the capacity
of FiT-eligible plants with approved Certificate of Compliance (COC) in
computing the FiT-All as against Transco’s projected FiT-eligible plants for
2018, including plants with nomination from the Department of Energy (DOE).
Other discrepancies include the FiT
rates and the cost recovery rate, which both contributed to the discrepancy in
the FIT-All computation.
“The new FiT-All rate shall be
charged to all on-grid consumers supplied with electricity through the
distribution or transmission network starting the immediately succeeding
billing period following Transco’s receipt of the ERC decision,” Devanadera
said.
“This reduction in the FiT-All will
mitigate the impact of the impending increase in rates due to the expected
increase in electric power demand and dwindling power supply in the coming
summer months,” she added.
Distribution utilities, the National
Grid Corp. of the Philippines, and Retail Electricity Suppliers serve as
collecting agents, and the proceeds go to the FiT-All Fund being administered
by Transco.
The FiT-All mechanism was
established pursuant to the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 which aims to spur the
development of emerging renewable power sources, such as wind, solar,
run-of-river hydro and biomass facilities.
Early this month, Transco revised
its earlier application to collect from consumers a FiT-All for 2019.
The state firm in July last year
filed for approval of the FiT-All for 2019 at the rate of P0.2780 per kWh hour.
Transco has recomputed the Fit-All rate to P0.2471 per kWh. Transco said the
revision was necessary since all data became available after its July 2018
filing.
“Since the actual application was
filed in July 2018, only the eligible RE plants’ actual billing data invoiced
to the FiT-All fund up to May 2018, and forecasts were used to compute the said
FiT-All rate.
The actual billing data for the year
2018 of eligible RE plants is already available. Thus, Transco has recomputed
the FiT-All for the year 2019,” it said in its manifestation filed with the
ERC.
No comments:
Post a Comment