The Department of Energy (DOE) said it will proceed with the conduct of the third round of the Green Energy Auction (GEA-3) involving 4,399 megawatts (MW) of total capacity.
The agency said GEA-3 will specifically cater mostly to non-feed-in-tariff (FIT) eligible renewable energy (RE) technologies including geothermal, impounding hydro and pumped-storage hydro.
However, the DOE said for GEA-3, run-of-river hydro which is an eligible technology for FIT, will also be included.
The DOE said in a statement yesterday that for GEA-3, estimated capacities to be auctioned off will be 699 MW from impounding hydro; 3,120 MW from pumped-storage hydro; and 380 MW from geothermal.
Qualified hydro projects for GEA-3 must be completed and operational from 2028 to 2030 while geothermal projects must be working from 2024 to 2030.
Another 200 MW of RE capacity from run-of-river hydro projects that must be completed beginning 2026 to 2028 will also be involved in GEA-3.
The DOE said publication of notices and terms of reference as well as the price determination for non-FIT eligible technologies and the green energy auction reserve price for run-of-river hydro is scheduled by April 29.
Actual auction proper for GEA-3 will be pursued by the DOE by August 21 with awarding of contracts for run-of-river hydro eyed by September 18 and the rest of the technologies by December 10.
The conduct of GEA is being pursued by the DOE annually to further entice investors to beef up the country’s RE capacities by offering incentivized fixed power rates among other benefits.
According to latest data from the DOE, total installed RE capacity in the Philippines comprising solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and biomass technologies as of end-November 2023 is at 8,320 MW.
The said figure is equivalent to 29.3 percent of the 28,359 MW entire installed capacity in the country for the period excluding energy storage systems.
