ERC OKs power rate hike in Cebu

CEBU, Philippines -  All power consumers in the country, including Cebu, will be paying higher power rates starting January next year after the Energy Regulatory Commission provisionally approved the four centavos Feed-In Tariff Allowance to help develop the renewable energy sector.

The P0.0406 per kilowatt-hour, which will be collected from all on-grid electricity consumers, would have an average of P4 increase for every 100-kilowatt of power consumption.

In a 27-page order, the ERC directed all distribution utilities, retail electricity suppliers, and the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines to adopt the necessary modifications in their respective billing and collection systems to effect the implementation of FIT-All as a separate line item in the bill.

Lyndon Jayme, assistant vice president for Utility and Economic Department of the Visayan Electric Company, said that the FIT-All would be a separate line item of the bill just like the universal charge, the environmental charge, and the NPC stranded cost.

“I would just like to clarify that this new increase in power rate, will not go to VECO but to TRANSCO, who will also remit the amount to the respective renewable energy developers,” Jayme explained.

ERC chairperson Zenaida Ducut, in a statement published in their website, said that the setting of the FIT Allowance signals the start of the implementation of the FIT System.

“We anticipate that with the FIT System in place, there will be more and more renewable energy companies investing and thus develop the renewable energy industry,” Ducut said.

Ducut added that “we all should view with optimism these changes brought about by the development, utilization and commercialization of Renewable Energy technologies so that we can have a clean and energized future.”

Renewable energy includes solar power, wind power, biomass, ocean, run-of-river, and hydropower.

TRANSCO earlier petitioned for the approval of the FIT-All. The agency is tasked in the establishment, management, administration, disbursement & settlement, through a government Trustee Bank, of the FIT-All Fund.

The FIT-All is a uniform charge billed to all on-grid electricity consumers who are supplied with electricity through the distribution or transmission network. It is akin to the universal charge that is imposed on all on-grid electricity consumers.

The ERC said the fund is essential to the implementation of the FIT System established under Section 7 of Republic Act No. 9513, otherwise known as the Renewable Energy Act of 2008.

“The FIT-All will ensure that the Renewable Energy Developers participating under the FIT System will be paid in full for their actual electricity generation based on the fixed tariff approved for them,” the ERC order reads. — (FREEMAN)