The Department of Energy (DOE) has approved the application of a new renewable energy (RE) firm for its inclusion in the Green Energy Option Program (GEOP).
DirectPower Services Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), is now included in the list.
“Right now, we have 13 RE suppliers given operating permits. There are still applicants, but I cannot mention how many. When it comes to the targets, we do not have a specific target of suppliers because this is a voluntary mechanism,” Jordan Ballaran, a senior science research specialist at the DOE, said during the 2021 Energy Investments Information, Education, and Communication Forum on Thursday.
The other RE firms in the GEOP list are Citicore Energy Solutions Inc., Aboitiz Energy Solutions Inc., Prism Energy Inc., Adventenergy Inc., Bacman Geothermal Inc., First Gen Energy Solutions Inc., SN Aboitiz Power-Magat Inc., SN Aboitiz Power-Res Inc., AC Energy Philippines Inc., Shell Energy Philippines Inc., Sparc-Solar Powered Agri-Rural Communities Corp., and Green Core Geothermal Inc. The GEOP is a voluntary policy mechanism that allows users consuming at least 100 kilowatts of power to source their supply from qualified retail energy suppliers that generate electricity from renewables.
Ballaran noted that GEOP allows for the pooling of RE supplies for a community, but noted that the agency has to issue more policies for this exercise.
“There is a provision on the pooling, but the pooling is still not yet clear, maybe the DOE can provide additional capacity support for this. But, right now, there’s no maximum capacity to sell under GEOP,” he said.