KUALA LUMPUR: Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Malaysia is completing second biogas e-bidding exercise and inaugural e-bidding for small hydro power systems.
Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC) Minister Yeo Bee Yin said the e-bidding process would facilitate price discovery for renewable electricity generated from the biogas and small hydro resources through healthy competition.
Yeo said the concept of Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme was aimed at providing premium tariff to renewable energy (RE) developers to generate clean electricity and the tariff was secured for a fixed tenure of agreement.
As at end of June 2019, SEDA approved 12,540 FiT applications with a total capacity of 1,744.38 MW. This comprised 34.6 per cent (small hydro), 25.4 per cent (solar PV), 23.5 per cent (biomass), 14.4 per cent (biogas) and 2.1 per cent (geothermal).
SEDA said the FiT scheme had traditionally offered tariff at fixed rate.
Having implemented the FiT for seven years, SEDA said it had progressed to improve price discovery of the tariff offered to the RE developer by way of competitive bidding.
The inaugural e-bidding exercise for biogas was carried out in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The schedule of e-bidding under the current phase includes 30MW and 160MW for biogas and small hydro respectively.
The opening quota for the biogas was on July 15, with closing date on July 29.
The opening quota for the small hydro was on September 2, with closing date on September 17.
Meanwhile, the total RE projects achieving commercial operation was 10,254 with total installed capacity of 621.96 MW (61.8 per cent solar PV, 15.4 per cent biomass, 11.5 per cent biogas and 11.3 per cent small hydro.
According to SEDA, the estimated capital investment for the RE project amounted to RM9.8 billion with an estimated carbon emission avoidance of 3.3 million tonnes until 2023.