DOE awards 648 renewable energy contracts end March

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Energy (DOE) awarded 648 renewable energy (RE) contracts as of end-March this year, seven years after the Renewable Act (RE) of 2008 was enacted into law.

The DOE aims to increase the country’s renewable energy generation to 15,304 MW by 2030 under the National Renewable Energy Plan.

DOE said these contracts have a potential generation capacity of 10,632.22 megawatts (MW) as against a total installed capacity of 2,752.20MW.

Here’s the breakdown of the 648 RE projects awarded by the government:

• 402 – hydro power
• 70 – solar
• 50 – wind
• 44 – biomass
• 41 – geothermal
• 6 – ocean energy

These 613 contracts were awarded for grid use.

There were also 35 renewable energy contracts awarded for self-generation of electricity for their own use. These include one each for hydro and wind; 11 for solar; and 22 for biomass.

There are 166 pending RE projects, 117 of which are hydro; 29, solar; 6, wind; 5 biomass; 4, ocean; and 4, geothermal. The potential generation capacity of these pending RE projects could reach 1,493.78 MW versus the installed capacity of 697.80 MW.

The DOE already streamlined the process of RE applications, from two years down to 45 days to ensure that RE developers and investors will have an easier time in applying for RE service contracts.

To promote the use of RE on a larger scale and to attract new investments for RE facilities, the government is banking on the feed-in-tariff (FIT) system, a premium rate paid for electricity fed into the electricity grid from a designated renewable electricity generation source like solar energy system or wind power plant.

Approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission in July 2012, the FIT rate in the Philippines is considered one of the lowest in the world. The impact of FIT to the electricity rate is marginal compared to the expected increase in the cost of traditional fossil fuels, like coal, in the coming years.

DOE is thus pushing for the increase of the installation target for solar from 50MW to 500 MW. – Rappler.com