Renewable energy contracts award set

Manila Bulletin

By JAMES A. LOYOLA

June 23, 2011, 11:18pm

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Energy (DoE) is planning to award about 40 to 80 more renewable energy (RE) contracts, mainly for mini-hydroelectric power projects, within the month.

Energy Undersecretary Jay Layug said “I don't have the specifics, but mostly are for hydropower again. A few wind, some solar but majority is hydro.”

Under the DoE’s list of RE contracts, there are 124 hydropower projects, of which 99 are in pre-development stages and eight are already in development stages. So far, there are already 17 existing hydropower projects in the country.

The DoE said there is a potential capacity of 281.97 MW from all the hydropower projects.

Layug pointed out that the new contracts would be on top of the RE installation targets set by the DoE.

"The ones to be awarded the SCs need to undertake pre-development studies for two years – they need to determine if the areas covered havestrong and consistent winds or they need to determine if the illumination of the sun is okay. So it's not included in the installation targets,” he said.

He explained that “for the installation targets, these are for the existing 227 service contract holders. In essence, these 40 to 80 are still on the exploration phase where they have to do a pre-development study for two years from the time we award it."

Under the Power Development Program, the country would need additional RE development projects to help meet the additional power requirements in the long-term.

For 2010-2030, the Luzon grid would need some 11,900 MW additional power, of which only 600 MW is committed and 3,448 MW is indicative.

In the 20-year period under the PDP, some 2,150 MW new capacity is needed for the Visayas grid. Of this, 654 MW is already committed and 186 MW is indicative.

For Mindanao, the requirement is about 2,500 MW additional capacity for the period 2010-2030, of which only 100 MW has been committed and 581 MW is indicative projects.

Meanwhile, as an update on Feed-In-Tariff (FIT), Layug said the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) has submitted the petition last May 16 and the ERC has 90 days from May 16 to conduct public consultations.

“So we're still awaiting that. There will be consultations all over the Philippines to determine whether the rates proposed are feasible or acceptable to ERC," said Layug.