THE Department of Energy (DOE), through the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB), is pushing for the implementation of Green Energy Option Program (Geop) mainly to empower end-users of electricity.
NREB chairman Jose Layug Jr., who led the public consultation on Geop at L’Fisher Hotel in Bacolod City Monday, September 4, said the program will provide captive electricity consumers the option to choose RE sources in meeting their energy requirement.
Layug said these end-users mainly include residential households with consumption requirement of not more than one megawatt (MW).
“Through this consultation, we are getting the pulse of all involved stakeholders especially here in Negros Occidental which hosts most of the solar farms in the country,” he added.
With the hounding issues on climate change and natural calamities brought by environment pollution, “we want to make sure that consumers would be able to choose cleaner forms of energy through Geop,” Layug said.
The public consultation in Bacolod City, attended by other DOE officials, officials of distribution utilities (DUs), electric cooperatives (ECs) and other power industry stakeholders in the Visayas, was the first of the three nationwide.
A similar consultation will be conducted in Davao City and Metro Manila next month.
Based on the draft department circular prescribing guidelines governing the establishment of Geop, the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) or its concessionaire National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) and entities duly authorized to operate within economic zones are entitled to participate in the program on top of power distributors and generators, ECs, and other entities to be identified by the NREB.
It also stated that end-users have the option to source their energy requirements from their respective DUs subject to some conditions, Energy Regulatory Commission-licensed retail electricity suppliers (RES), or through purchase of RE certificates from the Renewable Energy Market (REM).
DUs and ECs shall contract directly with the RE developers for corresponding requirements net of the contestable customers who have opted to contract directly with RE developers or suppliers, it added.
Layug said after the three consultations, the DOE is expected to sign and issue the department circular for Geop in October.
The program is also poised to cut down the cost of electricity, he said, noting that, for instance, the cost of solar technology went down by 40 percent in a span of three years.
“The reduction of technology cost for REs could also spell decrease in power cost,” Layug said, adding that “our goal is to even reduce the cost of electricity by more than 40 percent.”
For Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco), which serves the most number of electric consumers in Negros Occidental, its general manager Sulpicio Lagarde Jr. said Geop is a welcome development.
Lagarde said Ceneco has already been sourcing 20 MW from geothermal energy source, but more RE sources is better since it will help fulfill the objectives of Negros Occidental to become a renewable province.
“The program is very timely because we are about to end our 64-MW contract with Kepco-Salcon Power Corp. by 2021 and we need an additional requirement of about 20 MWs,” he said, adding that they are looking at sourcing the total of 84 MW from local RE sources.
