Many of the prospective renewable energy (RE) developers are already hankering to turn blueprints into shovel-ready projects, but they may need to laze around a little more as the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) has not hit the right formula yet in setting the feed-in-tariff allowance (FIT All) in a manner that makes the burden lighter for the end-consumers.

“Our initial competition is still high. We are still working on several assumptions on how to bring it down,” Energy assistant secretary Mario Marasigan said.

To move things forward, he indicated that they may need to sit down again with stakeholders so they can gather more inputs on how to calibrate the FIT.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) issued last week the final rules that shall govern NREB’s application for FIT allowance. The recovery period has been stretched for 20 years so the levelized FIT will turn out lower as it was spread over longer duration.

But in the whole scheme of things, the most awaited development by project sponsors is really the final number for the FIT allowance that shall be filed and subsequently approved by the regulator.

Marasigan explained there are too many factors that must be included in the equation, especially for intermittent technologies. “The numbers we have are still not at the level that will be cost-competitive for the consumers. But certainly, we know there’s a certain way how we can bring those numbers down,” he stressed. He added that “the NREB technical working group is still working on the tariff per resource plus the targeted capacities, so what we have is still far from the levelized tariff,” the energy official reiterated.

The FIT once approved, shall be collected from consumers as a cost component in the bill as “FIT All.” System operator National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) will act as settlement agent for the FIT costs due to the RE developers.