By Lenie Lectura - September
6, 2018
The Energy Regulatory Commission
(ERC) is targeting to release the revised rules on net metering and, at the
same time, issue the second draft rules governing micro-grid system before the
year ends.
“We are revising the net metering
rules. There have been concerns raised so we are moving to refine some
provisions. The complaints we received were mostly on pricing and lack of
protection,” said ERC Spokesman Atty. Floresinda Digal during the Powertrends
2018 forum held in Pasay City.
“We are targeting to post the
refinements in the last quarter of the year for net metering,” she added.
Under the net metering program,
electricity end-users with renewable-energy (RE) installations—such as solar,
wind or biomass—not exceeding 100 kilowatt (kW) can sell electricity they
generate in excess of what they can consume directly to their distribution
utility.
It is a nonfiscal incentive provided
in the RE law by way of granting credits earned from electricity produced net
of consumption. A net metering customer is only charged for his net electricity
consumption and is credited for any overall contribution to the electricity
grid.
The Philippine Solar Power Alliance
(PSPA), led by its President Tetchi Capellan, earlier said the current payment
scheme is not being followed, contrary to what the RE law states.
“Electric power generated by an
end-user may be used to offset electric energy provided by the utility company
to the end-user during the applicable period. Thus, the net metering customer
is only charged or credited, as the case may be, the difference between its
import energy and export energy,” Capellan said.
However, a lower kilowatt price for
exported energy, the generation charge, is applied to calculate the credits due
to the solar rooftop homeowners, she said, adding that her group had urged the
ERC to take into account the computation of credits as the present system is
contrary to law.
“What rooftop solar owners simply
ask is they receive the true value of solar and apply the true solar price to
both exported and imported energy, to be consistent with the law, its IRR
[implementing rules and regulations] and the ERC Rules,” she stressed.
On micro grid, Digal said the
commission would be able to release the second draft rules also in the fourth
quarter of the year.
The ERC released in 2017 the first
draft of the “Licensing Rules for Distributed Energy Resources [DER] and
Microgrid Systems.”
“Major issues such as allowing
private entities to offer this service and the threshold, among others, are
being studied now. These will be taken into consideration in the crafting of
the second draft which we also target to post in the fourth quarter,” added
Digal.
DERs are smaller power sources that
could be aggregated to provide power necessary to meet regular
demand. DERs also pertain to demand- and supply-side resources that can be
deployed throughout the system of an electric utility to meet the energy and
reliability needs of the customers served by the system, including, but not
limited to RE facilities, managed loads (including electric vehicle charging),
energy storage, and other measures necessary to incorporate renewable
generation resources, including load management and ancillary services.
The proposed DER Licensing Rules
shall cover generation companies that own or operate any of the
following: a DER that is installed in the premises of, and directly
connected to the load side of an end-user with no interconnection to the
transmission or distribution system; a DER that is installed in the premises
of, and directly connected to the load side of an end-user with an existing
interconnection to the transmission or distribution system; and a
micro-grid system or a localized grouping of distributed energy sources, loads
and storage mechanism which can operate both as part of the central grid or
independently as an island.
The ERC had said there is a need to
develop the DER Licensing Rules in view of the emergence of variable
renewable-energy resources and facilitate the entry of distributed energy
resources into the transmission and distribution systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment