STARTING January, power consumers will have to pay an additional 40 centavos per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in electricity rates, representing feed-in tariff allowance (FIT-All).
This, as the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on Thursday issued an order provisionally approving the application of the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) for it to collect FIT-All payment.
The FIT-All will serve as an incentive to renewable-energy (RE) developments, such as those on wind, run-of-river hydro, solar and biomass facilities.
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).
“The commission hereby provisionally approves the FIT-All of P0.0406/kWh, effective in the January 2015 billing of all on-grid electricity consumers,” said the ERC in its 27-page decision released on Thursday.
“For this purpose, all distribution utilities, retail-electricity suppliers, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, are hereby directed to adopt the necessary modifications in their respective billing and collection systems, to effect the implementation of the said FIT-All as a separate line item in their bills to end-users starting January 2015 billing and remit the same in accordance with the FIT-All guidelines,” the regulator ruled.
Transco was tasked to administer the FIT-All payment to RE developers. It filed before the ERC a provisional authority to collect the FIT-All payment of P0.04057 per kWh.
Wind-power developers are entitled to FIT rate of P8.53 per kWh; solar for P9.68 per kWh; hydro at P5.90 per kWh; and biomass at P6.63 per kWh.
After collection, this will be placed in a fund, which will be administered by Transco.
The ERC, in the same order, directed Transco to submit within 30 days from receipt of order data on remittance efficiency of entities collecting the universal charge submitted by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. on calendar years 2013 and 2014.
Likewise, the regulator wants Transco to submit within 30 days data on Electric Cooperatives Collection Efficiency obtained from the National Electrification Administration and within 15 days copy of the proposed trust agreement with the selected trustee of the FIT-All fund, together with details of the selection process undertaken by Transco.
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.”
It said that the public funds will be managed by a government-owned and -controlled company and not by the private, Sy-controlled NGCP.
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 web site, ownership of all of its transmission assets remains with Transco.