DOE widens coverage of ‘priority and must dispatch’ for RE capacities
By Myrna M. Velasco – October 7, 2022, 2:56 PM
from Manila Bulletin
A newly issued Department of Energy (DOE) circular has widened the coverage of renewable energy (RE) capacities included in the ‘priority and must dispatch’ protocols in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market.
The agency announced that Department Circular (DC) No. 2022-10-0031 has been set forth primarily to extend preferential dispatch for the generated electricity of the RE technologies.
The DOE explained that the scope of the policy had been broadened because when “priority dispatch” and “must dispatch” were first enforced in 2015, during the term of former Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla, the covered RE capacities were only those that had been qualified under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) incentive scheme of the government.
With the wider coverage of preferential dispatch, the energy department is expecting that this could serve as “sweetener” to more investment flows for clean energy technologies in the country.
Energy Secretary Raphael P. M. Lotilla primarily noted that “giving preferential dispatch to RE-generating plants will encourage investments for additional capacities in geothermal, biomass or impounding hydroelectric power plants because of guaranteed dispatch in the grid at their full available capacities under merchant pricing, allowing recovery of investments.”
The DOE circular specified that “must dispatch” is being accorded to RE technologies of which generation are of “intermittent nature” or those that have “difficulty to precisely predict the availability and these are primarily the installations in the solar, wind, hydro, run-of-river and ocean technology spheres.”
Further, a “priority dispatch” has also been mandated for biomass ventures as anchored on Section 7 of the Renewable Energy Act.
Lotilla said “granting all generating units utilizing RE resources either ‘must dispatch’ or ‘priority dispatch’ will aid in accelerating the development and utilization of indigenous RE resources and reduce the dependence on imported conventional energy sources.”
Taking off from that then, the energy chief conveyed that “this will minimize the country’s exposure to price fluctuations in the global market, making the supply and delivery of electric power more stable and secured from international geopolitical conflicts.”
As stipulated in the DOE circular, the market operator, its governance body Philippine Electricity Market Corporation (PEMC) and system operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) are all directed “to make the necessary amendments in the WESM Rules and Manuals to ensure efficient and effective scheduling and dispatching of preferential dispatch generating units.”
