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"As per Electricity ( Promoting Renewable Energy Through Green Energy Open Access) Rules, 2022, any consumer having contract demand/sanction load of 100 KW or above can get open access for power generation from Green Energy"
Ministry of Power, Govt. of India through exercise of section 176 of the Electricity Act, 2003 has made rules for promotion of green energy procurement and few clauses to support and promote green hydrogen and green ammonia. The rules mentions that any consumer who has contracted demand or sanctioned load of 100 kW or (was 1 MW earlier) more. Any entity, whether obligated or not may use one or more of the following methods:-
Captive consumption- No capacity limit for installation of power plants from RE sources, for their own consumption and such plants may be set up at any location in India.
Third party open access:- Power purchase from renewable energy source through Open Access from any developer or through power markets.
Requisition from distribution licensee- Purchase of green energy either up to a certain percentage of the consumption or its entire consumption or on voluntary basis, and the tariff for the green energy shall be determined separately by the Appropriate Commission.
Consumption of green energy from captive power plant or renewable energy certificates.
There will be transparency in the approval process of the open access applications. As per the rules, the approvals are to be granted in 15 days or else it will be deemed to have been approved subject to fulfilment of technical requirements. It will be through a national portal.
The rules provide certainty on open access charges to be levied on green energy open access consumers, which includes transmission charges, wheeling charges, cross-subsidy surcharge and standby charges. Consumers will be given certificates if they consume green power. Cross subsidy surcharge and additional surcharge shall not be applicable, if green energy is utilised for production of green hydrogen and green ammonia. Besides, there shall be a uniform renewable purchase obligation on all obligated entities in the area of a distribution licensees.
SERC and CERC had to amend their respective regulations to attain consistency with MOP Green OA Rules 2022. Green OA applications to be mandatorily be disposed in 15 days. Green OA applications shall have min of 12 time blocks of requisition capacity all the time. GoI will establish a Central Nodal Agency as supervisory body over the nodal agency of respective state handling OA applications specific towards Green Open access.
The rules will help streamline the overall approval process for granting open access, including timely approval, to improve predictability of cash flows for renewable power producers. It will also bring uniformity in the application procedure.