The Department of Energy (DOE) is setting the commercial operations of the Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) and Green Energy Option Program (GEOP) in Mindanao to commence on March 26.

In its department circular, the DOE shared that the Mindanao grid had been gearing up to shoulder the two policies, considering the region has been implementing the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) for a year now, said Business Mirror in its report.

RCOA allows customers to determine their chosen electricity suppliers. This policy was ordered under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 (EPIRA) to allow end-users options on top of opening the market.

Meanwhile, GEOP is a strategy of the energy department to enable the consumers to seek their renewable energy (RE) from a licensed supplier instead of utilizing what was supplied by their distribution utility (DU).

This policy was ordered under Republic Act No. 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008. In the circular, the department said that all electricity end-users have the right to source out their supply from RE suppliers, restricted to specialized regulations and rules.

To this, the DOE noted that the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) would keep a close eye on the transactions that would involve displaced contract capacity or energy (DCC/E) surfacing from the relocation of consumers under the two policies.

DCC/E is the surplus of the agreed-upon capacity or energy of a DU from a generating firm, resulting in an unused capacity of energy.