The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has revised upwards the fees and charges paid by eligible entities for accreditation, registration and issuance renewable energy certificates (RECs).

The regulator’s suo motu order, dated December 9, comes after the central agency — National Load Despatch Centre (NLDC) — submitted a proposal in October 2022 for fixing the fees and charges.

“The central agency in its proposal, has provided audited accounts of income and expenditure statement and balance sheet pertaining to REC mechanism for FY21 and FY22 and highlighted that it has suffered recurrent loss of ₹55.86 lakh and ₹50.09 lakh in the previous FY21 and FY22, respectively,” CERC said in the ruling.

One‐time registration

Subsequently, the regulator has revised upwards the one‐time registration processing fees from ₹1,000 to ₹10,000. Similarly, the charges for one-time registration have gone up from ₹5,000 to ₹25,000, and the annual registration charges have gone up from ₹1,000 to ₹10,000. Besides, the fees for issuing RECs have gone up from ₹2 to ₹5 per certificate .

“The commission noted the upgradation required in REC web application to conform with the REC Regulations 2022 and with the need for cyber security. It is also observed that as per Regulation 6(2) of the REC Regulations 2022, the accreditation of the eligible entities connected to the inter-state transmission system would be granted by the RLDCs of the region in which such eligible entities are located,” it added.

One-time accreditation

Similarly, for regional LDCs (RLDCs), the CERC has revised upwards the one-time accreditation processing fees from ₹5,000 to ₹10,000. The one-time accreditation charge and annual accreditation charge have been kept the same at ₹30,000 and ₹10,000, respectively.

To address mismatch between availability of renewable energy (RE) sources and the requirement of the obligated entities to meet their renewable purchase obligation (RPO), the pan-India market-based REC Mechanism was introduced in 2010.

In September 2021 , the Power Ministry revised the REC mechanism to offer more flexibility to the players, additional avenues, rationalisation and also addressing the validity period uncertainty issues. This was done after extensive stakeholder consultations.

Redesigned mechanism

Under the redesigned mechanism, the validity of the REC would be perpetual, that is till it is sold. The RE generators eligible for RECs will be eligible for the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA), as per the prevailing guidelines and the existing RE projects that are eligible for RECs will continue to get them for 25 years.

It also mandated that the CERC will have a monitoring and surveillance mechanism to ensure that there is no hoarding of RECs.

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