THE Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) will be ready by the end of this month to issue a provisional authority (PA) to the National Transmission Corp. (TransCo) for it to collect feed-in tariff allowance (FITa-All) payments.
TransCo was tasked to administer the FIT-All payments to renewable-energy (RE) developers. It filed before the ERC a PA to collect the FIT-All payments of P0.04057 per kilowatt-hour (kWh).
If approved by the commission, the said rate will be collected from electricity end-users and will be reflected in their electricity bills as a separate item, as mandated by the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 (RA 9513). After collection, this will be placed in a fund, which will be administered by TransCo. “We are finalizing the order which will contain what the commission has decided. The decision would take into account the effectivity,” ERC Spokesman Francis Saturnino Juan said on Thursday.
The FIT-All will serve as an incentive to RE developments, such as those on wind, run-of-river hydro, solar and biomass facilities.
In 2012 the ERC ruled that TransCo should administer the FIT payments in a bid to “resolve the issue that public fund[s] should be handled by [a] public entity.”
Juan said the National Renewable Energy Board, which formally endorsed TransCo to become the FIT-All administrator, agreed with ERC’s decision. He said that public funds will be managed by a government-owned and -controlled company and not by the private, Sy-controlled National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).
The NGCP manages and operates TransCo’s nationwide power-transmission system, which links power plants with electricity utilities across the Philippines. However, according to TransCo on its official webs ite, ownership of all of its transmission assets remains with TransCo.