No...I'm not talking about the $700B bailout bill that was shot down yesterday. I'm talking about the proposed Renewable Energy Act of the Philippines. After 20 years, this Clean Energy measure finally passed both houses! The Renewable Energy Coalition got the it to pass in the House of Representatives last June. Last Monday, the measure passed on 3rd reading in the Senate. In the next few weeks, congress will convene a bicameral conference committee to resolve contentious provisions of this measure. I will really be keeping an eye on the netmetering provision as the house will probably push for a 1% peak demand cap in contracts. My friend from Greenpeace will watch the fixed tariff provision.

What does this mean to the ordinary homeowner. It means that Renewable Energy home systems will be more affordable because of fiscal and operational incentives. ROI for systems will reduce significantly. The law will also mean that a certain % of the power you get comes from renewable energy.

Anyway...congratulations to the RE Coalition led by Cates Maceda. Special recognition goes to Rina Bernabe for all the legwork and coordination.

At the insistence of a friend, I am starting a series of blogs about the Renewable Energy Bill pending in the Philippine Senate. This measure has been around since 1988 and has never been passed into law. We have finally passed in the lower House. Progress in the Senate has been slow because this chamber easily gets sidetracked into other issues.

Anyway, today we talk about netmetering. This is what I can an operational incentive (vs. fiscal) because the benefits come during the operation of the renewable energy facility. This incentive allows for a power consumer to sell excess self-generated power into the grid. It is accomplished by replacing your watthour meter with one that turns back when you generate excess power. Another way of doing it is by adding a second meter that records excess power generated. At the billing date, power generated is credited into one's electric bill (i.e. Cost consumed - Cost generated = bill). Of course, they only credit generation cost.

This incentive has been a key contributor to the success of solar in other countries like the US and Germany. Netmetering reduces system cost by about 40%. I did some calculations and discovered that it also reduces the ROI of a Photovoltaic system from 20-22years to 6-8years. Why? Netmetering precludes the need for batteries gives the extra revenue stream.

The renewable energy bill passed in the Philippine House of Representatives puts a cap of 1% of peak demand in a grid. For Luzon, this would be about 120MW. Why should a law have a quantitive limit, when one can simply put the verbage "subject to technical limititations". (I presented this in the House Technical Working Group and got a concession, only to find it gone in a future version of the bill.GRRR!!!) The speculation is that private distribution utilities are behind this. The Senate version does not have such limit particularly also because of the support of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, the father of the Philippine Deregulated Power market. (As a lobbyist, I also learned my lesson here. Never let legislators off the hook. Appreciate the support of Sen's Juan Miguel Zubiri and Edgardo J. Angara and their respective staff.) It is also interesting to note that California initially had the same 1% cap but had this amended to 2% in order to meet the Million Solar home initiative.


Having said all this, it is essential that this measure is passed asap (considering purely technical limitations only). It provides for better access to clean, secure and sustainable power to our people.

My family had a great time today in Lake Caliraya, Laguna, planting trees to reforest a denuded portion of Napocor's ( National Power Corporation of the Philippines) watershed in this area. Caliraya is a man-made lake, home to ~600MW of hydro-electric power. Considering large dams and flooding was done in its construction, this lake is technically not sustainable. It does, however, provide clean electric power ( compared to fossil fuels).

One may ask, "How can hydropower be made sustainable?" The answer is simple in worlds but often difficult in practice. The principle involved is ensuring that a hydropower endeavor must have minimal impact to the immediate ecosystem and community in the site. Traditional large dams involved the impounding of huge volumes of water leading to key issues such as:

1.) Reduction of available water volume for the local community
2. ) Species/Human displacement because of flooding
3. ) Species destruction because of changes in flow characteristics
4.) Water quality changes because of flow characterisitic change

For hydro plants to be sustainable, they must maintain the overall flow characteristics and volume of the river or tributary. Systems known as run-of-river hydro systems do not have dams, but divert some of the water to power station by means of a penstock. After usage, the water is brought back to the river. These are often seen in rural settings in the Philippines and in other parts of South East Asia. Since this technology depends on the normal flow of the river, one much choose sites carefully to ensure consistent power delivery all year round.

Some small hydro plants, use dam technology. For these to be sustainable, they have to first demostrate that their dam is not large ( as defined by the world commission on dams). After this, these plants have to demonstrate that volume or flow changes will not affect local community usage or biodiversity.

Sad to say most of the major hydro plants in the Philippines are not sustainable. We do hope that proposed installations in Panay and Bicol consider sustainability in their designs.

Trivia: The largest hydropower station in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in China. It is projected to be capable of generating 22.5GW of power when all turbines are operational.

I had the privilege of being invited to a special forum of the Congressional Committee of Science,Technology and Engineering (COMSTE). This is a special committee of the Philippine Congress. Today's forum featured Dr. Cayetano Paderanga, one of our foremost economists, who gave a very good update of the country's economic performance. The main speaker was Dr. Johnsee Lee of the Industry Technology Research Institue.

ITRI is credited for playing a key role in Taiwan's transition to a High Tech economy. Dr Lee highlighted the activities of ITRI in the past decades like birthing companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Universal Microelectronics Company. Today ITRI works to bring frontier technologies such as Photovoltaics, Nanotech and Biotech.

Overall the talk was inspiring, bittersweet and alarming. Inspiring because Taiwan was able to overcome scarce resources and international marginalization. Bittersweet because decades ago we were training Taiwanese engineers now its the reverse. Threatening because they are now positioning themselves in areas like Photovoltaics , which is a key focus area for the Philippines.

Industry reps in COMSTE proposed an ITRI-like entity. I'm not so sure what strategy they intend to take, but I think industry can start something unilaterally. They can establish a non-profit entity (just like ITRI), pool funds and establish technical capability. After this, they can lobby for projects and be a contractor for the DOST or DOE. Dr Lee kept on repeating that ITRI is a contractor of the Taiwanese government.

The concept of a non-profit doing work for the government is not new in the energy sector. The defunct UNDP-GEF-DOE CBRED project attempted to establish a non-profit Market Service Center for renewable energy development. CBRED was shutdown because of project management issues. Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes keeps on saying that social mobilization is essential to meet development goals. An industry initiated/led institute would be essential to Sustainable Energy advancement.



EE times interview of Johnsee Lee talking about the latest activities of ITRI