October 8, 2019 | 10:26 pm
“ENHANCED” rules to encourage greater
participation in the government’s net-metering program should be ready by
month’s end, allowing commercial and industrial establishments with their own
renewable energy generation systems to sell their excess capacity to the
distribution utility, the Department of Energy (DoE) said.
The enhancements
include allowing these establishments to participate in the department’s
program that allows them to contribute to the supply of electricity during
power supply shortages or emergency situations.
“There’s two more
pubcons (public consultations) for this. We’ll be having [one] on the 10th
[of October] in Cebu to cater for the Visayan stakeholders, and then [in] Davao
on Oct. 24,” Mylene C. Capongcol, director of the department’s Renewable Energy
Management Bureau (REMB), told reporters during the Metro Manila leg of
consultations on Tuesday in Taguig City.
Undersecretary Felix
William B. Fuentebella said the enhanced rules, which will be issued in a
circular, should be ready “within the year, baka (maybe) within the
month.
Based on the draft
circular, “own-use” renewable energy (RE) systems with a capacity of at least
100 kilowatts (kW) may export their excess energy generation into the grid.
The move is meant to
maximize the development and utilization of potential RE resources, while
supporting the obligation of the power distribution utilities under the
renewable portfolio standards (RPS), or the market-based policy that requires
electric power industry participants, including suppliers, to source a portion
of their energy supply from eligible RE resources.
“We’re now introducing
the concept of renewable energy installed at the consumer’s premises or
distributed [system by] injecting power into the grid to make more available
supply for a particular franchise area,” Ms. Capongcol said.
“The intention is to attain
supply security [and] introduce a mechanism in which potential supply will be
available, and there’s a regulation and policy in place,” she added.
She said the concept is
similar to the interruptible load program (ILP) in which big establishments
with their own diesel-powered generation sets are called on by the distribution
utility to switch on their systems to help cover the deficiency in power
supply.
Mr. Fuentebella said
the participation of the establishments are on a voluntary basis. They will also
be compensated by the distribution based on the “blended” generation rate or
“time-of-use” rate.
The blended rate is the
weighted average rate of all the energy generation sources of the utility. The
time-of-use rate is an energy pricing scheme that allows a utility to offer
rates on the time of day when electricity is generated and the cost of
supplying it to customers during these specific periods. — Victor V. Saulon
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