Senate working on more bills to improve power sector

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate Committee on Energy is working on more bills to improve the country’s self-sufficiency and sustainability in the power sector.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the committee, said they are studying various proposals such as waste-to-energy development, micro-grids and adoption of renewable energy (RE) for own use.

 “Right now, we’re in the process of formulation. The bills we’re proposing are very technical,” he said.

The lawmaker said building micro-grids could be a solution in providing electricity services to off-grid areas.

A micro-grid system is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources with clearly defined boundaries which act as a single controllable grid and can connect and disconnect from the national grid to enable it to operate in both grid-connected or island mode.

 “What we are going to propose in the underserved and unserved areas is to find qualified third parties (QTP) that can build micro-grids, including power generation whether fossil fuel or renewable,” Gatchalian said.

The lawmaker has met with officials of Access to Sustainable Energy Program (ASEP), a European Union (EU) funded research, to provide technical assistance – including research, engineering concepts – which can be included in the bill.

The supporting bill is aimed to harmonize the development of micro-grids with the existing franchise of electric cooperatives (ECs).

The National Electrification Administration (NEA), which oversees 121 ECs nationwide, is targeting to energize 100 percent of rural households nationwide by 2022 through micro-grid development.

“We will file a resolution to update us on the nationwide electrification program of the government, where we are, how much do we still need to achieve 100 percent electrification by 2022,” Gatchalian said.

Another bill will be filed to push for the development of waste-to-energy projects.

“Our concept here, other than allowing waste-to-energy projects, we want to harmonize it with the Clean Air Act and at the same time, untangle the undefined concepts in waste-to-energy such as defining who owns the waste products,” Gatchalian said.

The lawmaker is also pushing for renewable energy usage down to the household level. “This is actually to encourage more household level distributive generation systems,” the senator said.

Part of the bill being drafted is the formula to compute how much self-generated power can be sold to the grid and faster permitting for RE system installation.

“We want to streamline all of those (requirements) for distributive generation systems…It should be easier for households to set them up,” Gatchalian said.