Power spot market ready to integrate renewable energy

BURGOS, Ilocos Norte, Philippines – The Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC), the operator of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), said it is now ready to integrate renewable energy (RE) resources, a move that may lead to lower power rates.

“PEMC has been relentless in realizing its mandates under the RE Act and we have expressly lent out our support through various stakeholder events,” said PEMC president Melinda Ocampo.

The Renewable Energy Law  of 2008 provides that all intermittent resources and feed-in-tariff qualified resources are entitled to “must dispatch” and “priority dispatch,” respectively, subject to the issuance of qualification and registration guidelines.

“This means that eligible RE resources as identified under the RE Act shall be given preference in the dispatch scheduling with the remaining obligations of these resources to submit their projected outputs,” PEMC said.

Ocampo said as a result of the preferential dispatch, eligible RE
resources would be given priority to inject to the grid as price
takers, displacing expensive fuels, which may possibly result in lower prices in the spot market as observed by other power exchanges.

Since 2012, PEMC has been crafting the appropriate framework for the implementation of the “must dispatch” and “priority dispatch” of RE resources, in accordance with the purposes of the WESM rules to encourage the use of renewable sources of energy.

In 2014, the registered capacity of RE at the WESM accounted for 428 megawatts while conventional energy accounted for 14,788 MW. This is expected to increase to 503.9 MW for RE and 15,142 MW for conventional sources.

The Department of Energy (DOE), for its part, has been pushing for the development of the RE projects in the country.

As of last month, the department has already endorsed 14 renewable energy projects to the ERC as feed-in-tariff (FIT) eligible.

The move is part of efforts to promote renewable energy in the country.

The projects – five biomass facilities, three hydropower plants, two solar plants and four wind farms – have also been issued certificates of endorsements (COE) and have a total FIT capacity of 304.051 MW, according to the DOE.

The biomass projects given COEs are: the 19-MW bagasse fired
cogeneration facility of Green Future Innovations with FIT
capacity of 3 MW; the 14.8-MW Montalban landfill methane recovery and power generation facility of Montalban Methane
Power Corp., with FIT capacity of 2.175 MW; the 1.2-MW Payatas
landfill methane recovery and power generation facility of Pangea Green Energy Philippines, with FIT capacity of 0.876 MW; the 3.6 MW biomass gasification plant of Lucky PPH International with a FIT capacity of 3.60 MW; and the 24-MW San Jose City rice husk-fired biomass plant of San Jose City I Power Corp. with FIT capacity of 9.9 MW.

The hydropower projects that received COEs are: the Irisan 1
hydroelectric plant of Hedcor Inc. with FIT capacity of 3.8 MW; the Tudaya 2 hydroelectric plant, also by Hedcor with FIT capacity of 7 MW; and the Commonal Uddiawan hydroelectric power plant of Smith Bell Mini Hydro Corp. with FIT capacity of 1.8 MW.

For solar projects, the DOE has issued COEs to the San Carlos Power project Phase A of San Carlos Solar Energy with FIT capacity of 13 MW and San Carlos Power project Phase B of the same company with FIT capacity of 9 MW.

Wind projects that received COEs are: the Bangui Bay wind power project Phase 3 of Northwind Power Development Corp. with FIT capacity of 18.9 MW; the Burgos wind project Phase 1 of Energy Development Corp. with FIT capacity of 87 MW; the Burgos wind project Phase 2, also of EDC with FIT capacity of 63 MW and the Caparispisan wind power project of North Luzon Renewable Energy Corp. with FIT capacity of 81 MW.