Future-Proof Strategy for Electric Cooperatives to Integrate More Renewables into their Supply Portfolio

The Philippines has close to 150 cooperatives and private distribution utilities, which are responsible for power supply for households and industry on their franchise area. Many of these cooperatives have over contracted themselves with traditional inflexible coal baseload capacity, on top of which they have expensive peaking contracts based on Diesel. That leaves little room to contract cheaper and cleaner renewable energy source into their generation portfolio before existing long-term Power Supply Agreements (PSA) expire. This presentation explores how cooperatives can adopt a strategy of substituting their expiring PSAs with new and cleaner technologies such as solar and wind while using flexible technologies such as engines and energy storage to integrate and manage the load. This presentation also shows how this strategy can lead to reduced overall generation cost together with significant reductions in carbon emissions. Crucial for the successful implementation of this strategy is that proper attention is put on the integration of the different technologies and the optimal operation of the assets. Unless the intermittency of renewables is balanced by a highly flexible generation technologies it will lead to curtailed renewable generation and reduced system efficiency. This presentation also gives recommendations on how these cooperatives and utilities can reach the lowest cost of electricity on the path towards 100% renewable energy future.