Thursday, September 5, 2019

RE’s first phase auction set


Published By Myrna M. Velasco

The first phase auction for renewable energy (RE) capacities in compliance to the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) will focus on the 380 megawatts of stranded solar and 100 MW biomass installations.
According to National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) Chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta, the RPS-underpinned bidding for stranded RE capacities is targeted either October or November this year.
“We’re really aiming it this year – it will be a cascading one,” she said, noting that the order of priority shall first be with the stranded capacities; then the next phase will be the projects that had been given certificate of commerciality (COC) by the Department of Energy.
For the first round of auction, she said that the total capacity shall be for 1,000 megawatts equivalent – out of the 2,000MW that the government has been aiming for RPS compliance starting year 2020.
“For biomass, most likely the stranded capacity is 100MW; then solar could be 380MW,” the NREB chairperson emphasized.
But she indicated that the initial bidding will be more than that – especially since so the basis of auction will be on megawatt-hours; which means that it shall be the actual energy that the RE plant could deliver on the off-take (capacity purchase) that a distribution utility (DU) shall be having to comply with the RPS.
“If you based it on capacity, that will be more than 1,000MW – because solar for example, the capacity factor at best is just 20%. And we want to do it megawatt-hour, because generation is the language of compliance in RPS,” Dimalanta explained.
She added that for first compliance under the RPS – that will be for December 2020, “and the DUs need to do their compliance plan effective next year, hence, we need to align our plans with that.”

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