Despite a delay in the firm’s compliance process, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) permitted HPCL Biofuels, a generator of renewable energy, to get renewable energy certificates (RECs).
It instructed the National Load Despatch Center (NLDC) to grant the RECs following the careful inspection to make sure the projects complied with all requirements for REC eligibility.
HPCL Biofuels has submitted a petition asking for forgiveness for the delay in complying with the regulations for the issue of RECs.
For December 2021 and November 2021, the corporation delayed applying for the issue of RECs by two days and 32 days, respectively.
HPCL Biofuels owns two ethanol cogeneration installations with a combined capacity of 20 MW, located at Sugauli and Lauriya in the state of Bihar. It presently has access to 5.3 MW under the non-solar category of the REC process.
According to HPCL Biofuels’ submission, the Bihar Renewable Energy Development Agency (BREDA) generated a new account number as a result of the merger of several banks.
Since BREDA failed to notify the company of the change, it caused a delay in the payment of the agency’s annual fees for portal accreditation.
Additionally, due to certain discrepancies between the opening and closing REC balances in the online electricity injection report (EIR) submitted to the power generator by Tata Power Trading Company (TPTCL), the NLDC’s authentication of the papers was delayed.
Before the final papers could be delivered to NLDC, HPCL Biofuels alerted TPTCL of the variance and requested correction. TPTCL reported that the issue in NLDC’s portal was the cause of the variance in the online EIR and that NLDC had fixed it.
The renewable energy generator subsequently received a letter from NLDC on July 11, 2022, in which NLDC informed the generator that it was unable to accept the application for issuing RECs because the application’s receipt had taken longer than the required six months, in accordance with the REC Regulations.
The REC Regulations, 2010, and the REC issuance processes, CERC said, required that the eligible company submit an application for the issuance in accordance with the information provided in the EIR and also submit the same information to NLDC within six months.
The Commission stated that there were two factors involved in the delay. First, there was a delay in paying the yearly costs for portal accreditation due to the merging of several banks.
Second, there were some changes in the opening and closing balances of RECs and RECs issued on the NLDC’s portal, which was created by TPTCL.
The regulator stated that accepting the delay would not affect the stakeholders because it was just procedural in nature.
