PRESS RELEASE November 24th, 2011
Tariff for “supply back” of sustainable energy for households: 40 cents per kiloWatt hours
Willemstad – In the future every household may produce its own electricity, and what is not used can be supplied back to the network. This is also applicable for small businesses. They will receive monthly credits of 40 cents per kilowatt hour for the sustainable energy they supply, which will be settled at the end of the year. For bigger companies a tariff of 42 cents per kilowatt hour is applicable. On November 23th, 2011 the Council of Ministers has established the tariffs for sustainable electricity produced by households and small businesses on the one hand and for bigger companies on the other hand. These tariffs will be applicable as of January 1st, 2012. The next date for adaptation, according to the procedure, is April 1st, 2013. The “Bill on Small Scale Sustainable Electricity Provision”, has been established on November 16th, 2011, and now the tariff for re‐supply has been established as well. The Bill contains requirements and regulations for the small scale production of electricity by households and business end users. This Bill is a further elaboration of the “Bill on Regulation of Electricity Provision Curaçao 2011‐2015”, which has been established on February 16 th, 2011 by the Council of Ministers. In this Bill the vision and the policy intention of the government on of electricity provision is described. Sustainable energy The electricity policy of the government among others focuses on stimulating the generation and usage of sustainable energy based on clean resources, such as sun and wind, which are available in the country itself. To facilitate this generation and usage, it was necessary to regulate 2 issues: the small scale production of sustainable electricity and the connection installations for small scale sustainable electricity production to the public electricity network. Aqualectra is now obligated to connect every equipment for small scale sustainable electricity production for personal usage or usage by a limited circuit of persons and/or legal entities, to their transportation and distribution network. However, the equipment should comply with all connecting requirements and other technical regulations. This connecting brings the opportunity for supply
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back. When the end user of solar or wind energy is connected to Aqualectra’s network, he can “supply” the surplus of electricity which he does not use “back” to the electricity network. This is possible based on strict requirements and regulations. Net metering The small scale electricity producer who supplies electricity to Aqualectra, will be compensated based on the settling between the supplying and what has been used from the public network. This is called “net metering”. For households and small businesses till 10kW, on monthly basis the kWh supplied to Aqualectra will be offset on a 1:1 bass against the kWh supplied by Aqualectra. Hereby the supply tariffs of Aqualectra will be used. However, if in a month a household has supplied more back to the network than it has used, a credit of kWh will be accumulated which will be transferred to the next month. At the end of the calendar year, a possible excess of credits or better said the accumulated credits, will be paid out to the customer by Aqualectra according to supply back tariffs of 40 cents per kWh and a new cycle of supply and supply back is started. For business end users that produce between 10kW and 1MW, no offsetting will be applied. Every KWh supplied back will be settled immediately by Aqualectra against 42 cents per KWh. Thus no credit will be accumulated. Payback The goal behind the supply back tariffs is for small scale producers of sustainable electricity to receive an adequate, cost based, compensation for the sustainable energy generated by them and which is being supplied back to the network. This way within a reasonable period they can gain a return on their investments in installations such as solar panels. Balance A balance is necessary though: from a business economics point of view neither the supply back nor its respective tariffs should cause unreasonable costs for Aqualectra. Aqualectra however has and remains with the responsible to continue functioning as the public electricity network, and as back up for all households and organizations on Curaçao. Aqualectra may not be brought into a risky situation. For that reason a limit of generating equipments for small scale electricity has been determined. For households and small businesses this limit is 10kW, for business end users this is 1MW. For both forms of small scale
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production no concession is needed; for production on bigger scale a concession is needed. [END PRESS RELEASE] Photo caption: The electricity policy of the government focuses among others on stimulating the generation and usage of sustainable energy bases on clean resources, like sun and wind, which are available in the county itself. Note for the editing department – not for publication
For more information:
Jacques Heide Spokesman Publicity Campaign New Electricity Policy Tel. 5133717
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