Published July 28, 2018, 10:00 PM By Myrna M.
Velasco
The line item in the electric bills
subsidizing renewable energy (RE) projects had been sought to go up again to as
much as P0.2780 per kilowatt-hour (kwh), based on the feed-in-tariff allowance
(FIT-All) adjustment petition of FIT fund administrator National Transmission
Corporation (TransCo) with the industry regulator.
The FIT-All charge in the power
bills will be rising by P0.0217 per kwh starting January next year; from what
is currently billed at P0.2563 per kwh.
TransCo president Melvin A. Matibag
confirmed that the company filed the new FIT-All application with the Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC) on Friday (July 27).
He qualified though that the
anticipated FIT-All adjustment in 2019 will be “lower than our filing for
2018.”
The last FIT-All hike approved by
the ERC had been at P0.0733 per kWh, jacking up the subsidy charge then from
P0.1830 per kWh.
Despite the increased FIT-All
charges reflected in the billings starting June, 2018, however, TransCo
indicated that it still suffers from collection shortfall of P4.0 billion – if
reckoned on an annual basis.
Until this time, the FIT Fund
administrator-firm is still on catch up mode when it comes to its collections,
hence, full settlements to qualified renewable energy (RE) projects cannot
still be satisfied.
The FIT-subsidized projects were
those endorsed by the Department of Energy (DOE) to avail of such incentives;
and subsequently affirmed by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) via the
issuance of their respective FIT-certificate of compliance (FIT-COC) that
warrants them technical eligibility to operate their facilities and for these
to be underpinned by the FIT subsidies.
In the past two years, delays in the
approval of FIT-All adjustments left TransCo with staggering collection
deficiency of as much as P8.0 billion plus over P500 million of interest
charges.
On the part of the RE developers, it made a dent on their operations and/or lender commitments because the revenue stream they have been expecting were not coming as targeted.
On the part of the RE developers, it made a dent on their operations and/or lender commitments because the revenue stream they have been expecting were not coming as targeted.
Grid parity or having rates that
will match the cost of conventional energy technologies had been promised by RE
developers as early as 2016, but until now, the FIT-All charge keeps climbing
instead of what had been presumed as rate reduction.
No comments:
Post a Comment