KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 29): The government has lowered grid access charges to buy and sell renewable energy by up to 40% under two programmes — Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme (CRESS) and Community Renewable Energy Aggregation Mechanism (CREAM).
CRESS allows businesses and industries to buy renewable energy directly from power producers (like solar or wind farms), using the national power grid.
Meanwhile, the CREAM programme allows small-scale solar (like rooftop panels on homes) to sell excess power to other users via the grid.
The system access charges under the CRESS programme are:
- For solar and wind (non-firm) supply: from 45 sen to 40 sen per kilowatt hour (kWh)
- For firm supply: from 25 sen to 20 sen per kWh
The community access charges under CREAM have been reduced to 9 sen per kWh, from 15 sen per kWh.
The changes were done after taking into account the latest tariff schedule, effective July 1, to “ensure fair rates without double counting”, according to the Ministry of Energy Transition and Water Transformation.
“These new SAC (system access charge) and CAC (community access charge) rates have been reduced by up to 40% compared to the previous values,” it said. “Hence, these revised rates are expected to attract more corporate consumers to source their green electricity supply at more competitive costs.”