The General Directorate of Energy and Geology revealed, on Friday, the continuation of stopping the submission of new applications for licensing electricity production projects. This ban has been in effect since March 2020 and may last until March of this year.
The Director-General, led by Joao Bernardo, wants to avoid “Flood of reception capacity requests [de energia na rede] which will go beyond offering quality response by both the DGEG and the network operators” – EDP Distribuição and REN – with which promoters of renewable projects can now agree on the investments needed to phase out the energy produced.
In March 2020, the General Directorate of Food Security had already suspended the evaluation of new applications, either due to the fact that exceptional measures were being implemented to respond to the public health crisis (including closing its services to the public, which is still in place), or due to the fact that there were many Operations at hand.
“The growth rate of the electricity connection requests for the electricity network far exceeded all the most optimistic expectations, and reached impractical or useless values,” this came about two years ago in a telegram from this General Directorate, which revealed that there are several thousand requests to connect Power for medium / large exchangers and also for small production and self-consumption units.
Thus, in that order of March 2020, the General Directorate began to prevent the submission of new applications for the assignment of capacity reservation bonds, agreements to allocate reception capacity in the Public Service Electricity Network (RESP), the registration of small units for production and self-consumption and licenses for electricity production or for the construction of infrastructure for the network.
The goal was to focus efforts on “processing the requests received in DGEG to that date, which greatly exceeded the receiving power of RESP, nearly depleting capacity in both AT [alta tensão] Like the word MAT [muito alta tensão]According to the DGEG, in a new order published on Friday, January 14.
The entity discloses that the submission of new license applications continues to be suspended, in order to avoid a new flow of applications “without benefit to any of the parties, SEN [Sistema Eléctrico Nacional]including consumers and promoters.
While emphasizing that there are still “clear limitations on available human resources” due to the context of the pandemic, the entity overseen by the Secretary of State for Energy also argues that building an energy model with more renewables and achieving targets until 2030 “requires greater weighting.” and criteria in allocating a scarce resource, such as the ability to receive energy in RESP.”
“Maturity of the offers, both from the point of view of technical solutions, location of projects, their environmental assessment, framing and local and regional acceptance” are some of the factors that determine a “good rate” of implementation. and activating projects” and this must be taken into account in licensing processes.
In addition, the DGEG notes that there is a new diploma outlining the organization and functioning of the SEN (published today in Republic Diaries) and that it is necessary to “complete the adequacy of the new licensing model for the electricity production activity and the adequacy of the relevant procedures and information technology support platforms, which are expected to be completed at the end of March.”
The entity says reopening will be reported “by order.”
The specific ban now includes requests for “capability reservation titles for proof-of-concept or pilot projects, for deployment in marine space or inland waters or for self-consumption projects or CERs.” [comunidades de energias renováveis]”.
Also accepted are “registrations and operating certificates for proof of concept or pilot projects, to be deployed in marine space or inland waters, for green hydrogen production, or even for self-consumption or CERs” and “construction licenses”. and operation of the network infrastructure (lines, branches, transformer stations, and substations).
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