Off-grid renewable draft rules posted for comment
THE Department of Energy (DoE) has posted for comment its draft rules on renewable portfolio standards (RPS) covering off-grid areas or those that are not connected to the country’s power transmission network.
The agency has called on industry stakeholders to submit their recommendations before it issues a comprehensive policy on RPS, a market-based policy that requires distribution utilities and other industry participants to source a portion of their power supply from eligible renewable energy resources.
“The purpose of these rules is to contribute to the growth of the renewable energy industry through diversification of energy supply, thereby spurring socioeconomic development and helping address environmental concerns,” the draft rules state.
The DoE said the RPS rules, which will come out in a department circular, are also expected to rationalize the efficient use of the universal charge for missionary electrification, a uniform fee collected from all electricity consumers.
It also said the rules are meant to improve self-efficiency in power generation through integration of renewable energy in the supply mix of off-grid areas.
Under the draft rules, the mandated participants are generation companies, including the National Power Corp.’s (Napocor) small power utilities group; new power provider or qualified third party; distribution utilities with respect to their owned generation facilities; and other entities that generate electricity and serve off-grid areas as may be determined and approved by the DoE.
They are to generate, procure and subsequently maintain a minimum percentage of renewable energy (RE) share in their portfolio.
The eligible RE resources are energy coming from biomass, waste-toenergy technology, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, ocean, RE components of the generation in case of hybrid systems, and other emerging technologies that may be later approved by the DoE.
The RE portfolio must be increased yearly. The DoE said annual incremental RE requirement should not be lower than 1% of the preceding year’s actual generation. —