The Department of Energy (DOE) said the second Green Energy Auction (GEA) program will be conducted by June to attract as much as 11,610 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity from renewable energy (RE) sources.
Interested RE producers will compete for incentivized fixed power rates by offering their lowest price for a certain capacity.
The first iteration of GEA was done in June 2022 which opened as much as 2,000 MW of capacity.
DOE Undersecretary Rowena Guevara said at the Philippine Electric Power Industry Forum in Manila yesterday the 11,610 MW will be distributed for projects that should be completed by 2024 to 2026.
The capacity of projects that should be completed by 2024 is 3,590 MW which will be distributed to ground-mounted solar, roof-mounted solar, onshore wind and biomass technologies. Another 3,630 MW will be auctioned for projects needed to be completed by 2025 for technologies also utilizing ground-mounted solar, roof-mounted solar, onshore wind and biomass.
A total of 4,390 MW will be auctioned off for projects that should be completed by 2026 using ground-mounted solar, roof-mounted solar, floating solar, onshore wind, biomass and waste-to-energy.
“The proposed installation targets under GEA-2 were determined based on the capacity needed by the three grids to ensure sufficient supply, the RE capacity levels to meet the target of 35 percent RE share in the power generation mix by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040 and the volume of RE certificates necessary to comply with the mandates under the Renewable Portfolio Standards,” Guevara said.
Guevara said this early, the DOE is also preparing for GEA-3 by the fourth quarter which will involve geothermal and impounding hydro technologies but the volume of capacity is yet to be decided.
The DOE said it will include in the terms of reference of the upcoming GEA rounds the list of areas and corresponding capacity of transmission that is available to guarantee that the projects will not face any transmission issues at the projected timelines of 2024 to 2026.
Meanwhile, Guevara said the DOE saw additional instances of yellow alerts in the Luzon Grid.
Yellow alerts are issued when the level of power reserve in the grid is low, while red alerts are declared when actual power supply against demand is insufficient and power interruptions are imminent.
Last January, the DOE said that12 instances of yellow alerts in the region is possible but Guevara said they now see at least 15 yellow alerts in the Luzon Grid due to the delay in the completion of a power plant which she did not identify.
Guevara said the situation may change with the expected completion of 80 percent of the Mindanao-Visayas interconnection by the end of the month.
