New power mix pushed

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Energy (DOE) is pushing for a new energy mix of 50 percent baseload and 50 percent mid-merit to accommodate renewable energy (RE) projects coming into the grid, a ranking official said.

The Philippine power sector needs to shift to a new energy mix of 50 percent baseload and 50 percent mid-merit in anticipation of RE capacities coming in, DOE Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella said during a forum hosted by GE Philippines and the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.

“We are telling the gencos (generating companies) and the industry players that this is what we see from the system point of view. From the system point of view, what we are looking at is the demand behavior plus the coming in of intermittent, variable REs,” he said.

Flexi plants are power facilities with the ability to immediately start up and ramp up their generating capacities.

The expectation of having more RE developments is the implementation of supporting policies such as Renewable Portolio Standards (RPS) and Green Energy Option (GEO).

“We have placed in the RPS. We’re going to roll it out as we have signed it already. This year is year zero, year one will be 2019, 2020 is year two. We’re going to have the GEO as well,” Fuentebella said.

“We’re anticipating the entry of more RE. To integrate the RE into the system, we need more flexi plants,” he said.

RPS is a policy mechanism requiring electric power industry participants such as generators, distribution utilities, and suppliers to source or produce a specified fraction of the electricity they generate from eligible RE resources.

Meanwhile, the GEO program empowers end-users to choose renewable energy resources for their energy requirements.

In terms of technology, Fuentebella said it could be any technology as long as they could scale up and down quickly. Some of the technologies could be gas, geothermal or hydropower, among others.

“We’re technology neutral. We’re just saying that the capability of the plant, it should be flexible,” the DOE official said.