KUALA LUMPUR (March 9): The government has set an additional quota of 630 megawatts (MW) for a slew of renewable energy (RE) programmes, including 200MW for the corporate green power programme (CGPP) and 200MW for the commercial and industrial (C&I) net energy metering (NEM) programme, said Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad. 

The new quota brings the total CGPP quota to 800MW, with maximum quota of 30MW for each solar project. NEM quota for the C&I sector is also raised to 800mw, from 600MW.

Also included is an additional 50MW quota for residential NEM, raising it to 150MW from 100MW previously. In a nutshell, NEM typically offsets power consumed by a user with power generated from the rooftop solar installed.

Application for the CGPP will be open all year round, doing away with the deadline set in March previously, said Nik Nazmi at the launch of the Malaysian Energy Transition Outlook report here. 

The programme may also be opened to non-solar RE resources, he added. 

Introduced in November last year, CGPP is aimed at encouraging solar power producers and commercial power consumers to partner up to commission new solar power generation capacity.

Deadline for interested parties to apply for this programme was set in February, before being extended to March and changed to its current format.

The latest quota for residential NEM adds to the existing 100MW open for take-up from 2021 to end-2023 to 150MW. 

Official data showed that some 68.07MW of the residential programme has been taken up, while the C&I segment saw 485.92MW taken up so far. The government also has 100MW under the NEM programme for government buildings.

“It is interesting to note that in one state in Australia, rooftop solar has replaced large scale solar as a contributor of renewable energy,” said Nik Nazmi.

Industry sources told The Edge that pick-up of NEM among C&I customers has picked up in recent months, following the government’s decision to reduce subsidies on electricity this year. 

Electricity consumers including households could expect revisions of tariff to better reflect the cost of coal and gas used for power generation, with the next review scheduled by June for the 2H2023 period. 

The story has been amended to correct the maximum size of a renewable energy generation project under the Corporate Green Power Programme to 30MW.