The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has agreed on Dec. 9 to revise up fees and charges paid by eligible entities for accreditation, registration and issuance renewable energy certificates (RECs).
The regulator’s action comes after the National Load Despatch Centre’s (NLDC) proposal submitted in October 2022 for a revision of 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.
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 increased from ₹5,000 to ₹25,000, and the annual registration charges have gone up from ₹1,000 to ₹10,000. Moreover, the fees for issuing RECs have gone up from ₹2 to ₹5 per certificate.
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 remained the same at ₹30,000 and ₹10,000, respectively.
In 2010, the pan-India market-based REC Mechanism was introduced to address mismatch between availability of renewable energy (RE) sources and the requirement of the obligated entities to meet their renewable purchase obligation (RPO).
In September 2021, the Power Ministry revised the REC mechanism to offer more flexibility to the players, additional avenues, and rationalization. It also addressed the validity period uncertainty issues.
Under the revised mechanism, the validity of the REC would be permanent until it is sold. It also mandated that the CERC will have a monitoring and surveillance mechanism to ensure that there is no hoarding of RECs.