Transitional measures for post-FIT: Further study based on the standard price and bidding system

Transitional measures for post-FIT: Further study based on the standard price and bidding system

On 15th October, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry(METI) and the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy(ANRE) discussed the detailed design of new system to replace the current FIT (Feed-in Tariffs for renewable energy) at subcommittee meeting. In order to shift to the “market-linked type”, study will be furthered for setting the reference price as a guideline for revenue. For power generation operators, in addition to giving certain consideration to the burden of imbalance risk, environment will be promoted in order to make transactions even on a small scale.

A reference price is calculated from the past wholesale market price. Along with suppressing the long-term market fluctuation risk, METI encourage the power generation / selling in the time and season considering the price and induce the price to be able to make maintenance at an appropriate time. How far to refer the wholesale market price will be further studied.

On the other hand, it also mentioned the necessity of considering small businesses operators  when promoting market integration. METI will narrow down the power sources and scales that are subject to market transactions and study the supporting measures in case of buyer not found, along with promoting the development of aggregators by taking the FIP in Germany as an example and considering that it is difficult for small businesses operators to meet the minimum trading unit of the Japan Electric Power Exchange (JEPX).
In order to review the imbalance exception, power generation operators will be requested to pay the considerable portion of the burden.