‘Differentiated FITs’ enforced on 2nd RE installation

Manila Bulletin 
By Myrna M. Velasco 
Published: May 27, 2013 
First-movers will have prime advantage availing flat feed-in-tariff (FIT) per technology; while the next round of renewable energy (RE) installations will be enforced with differentiated FITs, according to Department of Energy (DOE) director Mario Marasigan.
He told reporters that calculations for differentiated FITs for the next round of RE projects are already being done by the National Renewable Energy Board.
The energy official explained that the future FIT numbers will be crunched “depending on the capacity of the power plant and the technology that will be used in future projects.”
For instance, he noted that for projects with bigger capacity installations, the FIT will be lower. That will be the time when a 150-megawatt wind plant may have lower FIT than a 50-MW development of the same technology, it was added.
The initial call on the imposition of differentiated FITs was made when it was noticed that many of the RE power projects being implemented have bigger scale installations compared to the  megawatt-reference used by NREB on the approved FIT rates.
However, this was sternly opposed by project developers as they noted that “first-mover advantage should be extended to them for braving all the risks on the initial round of installations”; and any change in the rules shall just be carried out in the next round of projects.
With differentiated FITs in the future, it is expected that the cost impact of RE for consumers will also ease.
In many countries, FIT rates, primarily for solar and wind technologies, are already going down. Technologies have also been improving that wind projects could already be equipped with 7.5MW turbines.
Apparently though, RE policymakers prefer to side with the project developers this time, noting that the FIT Allowance (FIT-All) impact of the initially-allowed installations would still be meager at P0.03 to P0.05 per kWh.
Representative projects were used by NREB in the FIT calculations approved last year by the Energy Regulatory Commission.   source