House OKs franchise for ‘Solar Para sa Bayan’
Credit to Author: GLEE JALEA| Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:23:07 +0000
Lawmakers on Monday approved on third reading a bill granting a 25-year franchise to the Solar Para sa Bayan Corp. sought by founder Leandro Leviste, son of Sen. Loren Legarda.
With 198 affirmative votes, seven negative votes and one abstention, lawmakers approved House Bill 8179 granting Solar Para sa Bayan a franchise to construct, install, establish, operate and maintain distributable power technologies and minigrid systems throughout the Philippines to improve access to sustainable energy.
Minigrid systems refer to integrated groups of facilities and other technologies that may operate either independently or in conjunction with transmission or distribution systems.
The measure, authored and sponsored by Deputy Speaker Arthur Yap, grants Solar Para sa Bayan the right to open and have non-discriminatory access to any distribution system, allowing it to be a member of the wholesale electricity spot market, subject to compensation and existing regulations.
In September, Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza Atienza said the franchise bill would create a “super monopolizing company” worth at least P100 billion and would bring down the whole power sector of the country.
Consumer groups also opposed the passage of the measure, claiming that it would effectively kill competition with other renewable energy developers in the country.
Yap cited World Bank data that the Philippines continues to have the most expensive residential electricity in Asia, 17 years after the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 was enacted.
He added that 2.4 million households remained without power, 58 percent of which are in Mindanao.
“Masbate, Sulu, Palawan, Surigao Del Sur, Negros Oriental, Sorsogon, Batanes, Zamboanga City, Occidental Mindoro and Marinduque are in turn, the top 10 provinces that suffer from outages per year,” Yap said.
Leviste, who also serves as president of Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings Inc., told reporters that the granting of the Solar Para sa Bayan franchise is not a mere issue of killing competition against other electric firms.
“It’s sad that in our country, 20 million people don’t have 24-hour electricity. According to a Pulse Asia Survey, 80 percent of Filipinos want new choices for electric service but the focus of other services has been to try to improve the status quo as much as possible. Why don’t we all just improve our service so that new choices would not be necessary?” Leviste told The Manila Times in a chance interview.
Leviste said that Solar Para sa Bayan was initiated to supply power at a lower cost to consumers and at zero cost to the government to towns that would have 24/7 access to electricity for the first time. About 200,000 Filipinos would benefit from the project, he said.
He added that hybrid minigrids in the towns of Dumaran, Palawan; Claveria, Masbate; Calayan, Cagayan; Lubang, Occidental Mindoro; and Dingalan, Aurora, among others, would be established over the next few months.
The post House OKs franchise for ‘Solar Para sa Bayan’ appeared first on The Manila Times Online.