The National Transportation Corp. (TransCo) is planning to lower the Feed-In Tariff Allowance (FIT-All), which will cover the payments for renewable energy producers, in 2019.
Melvin Matibag, president and CEO of Transco, said that they will file a new FIT-All rate application for 2019 to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
“Our projection is lower than what we filed for 2018 because our deficit will also be lower,” he said,
The lower rate is due to the agency filing an increase for this year’s FIT-All fund collection, which has yet to be approved by the ERC.
TransCo filed to raise the collection from consumers to 29.32 centavos per kWh, last year. The FIT-All rate charged to consumers now is 25.63 centavos per kWh, which was recently approved by the ERC.
Although the approved rate is high, it will help the agency to cover the payments backlog and interest to renewable energy developers, said Matibag.
“[With the recent approval of ERC,] we are projecting to end the year with a P4.6 billion backlog,” he said. “If the 2018 FIT-All rate is approved, that will further lower our backlog.”
On the other hand, TransCo is planning to tap the World’s Bank Green Fund to help settle the payments to renewable energy developers.
“There is a green fund coming from World Bank, maybe we can tap that. But we’re still making representations to cover the backlog,” Matibag said.
The FIT-All is a uniform charge bill to all on-grid consumers to cover payments to renewable energy developers under the FIT system, which details perks for power developers for a period of 20 years.
TransCo managed all FIT-All fund collections.
