Malaysian feed-in tariff launch piques developers’ interest

• 
  By December 2, 201 feed-in tariff applications, totalling 143.78MW, had been already been submitted.

The Sustainable Energy Development Authority Malaysia (SEDA Malaysia) has started accepting applications from PV project developers to participate in its new feed-in tariff programme. Tariffs range from RM1.2300 per kWh (US$0.39) for the smallest installations to RM0.8500 per kWh (US$0.27) for systems between 10MW and 30MW.

Although the Malaysian Senate approved the programme – which also offers incentives for biomass, biogas and small hydro technologies – in April, SEDA only started accepting applications at the start of the month. The response has been positive and by December 2, 201 proposals, totalling 143.78MW, had already been submitted.

Once the tariff verification has been completed for each project submission, applicants have 14 days to complete the process, which includes submitting the necessary paperwork and payment of an application fee for larger systems. Once this is finalised, SEDA Malaysia will issue a feed-in approval (FIA).

The initial tariff rates* are listed below:

*Additional bonus payments are also available for rooftop (RM0.26 per kWh) and BIPV (RM0.25) systems, as well as for locally produced modules (RM0.03) and inverters (RM0.01).

The programme offers 21-year contracts and successful bidders will need to complete their systems by 2014.

Malaysia is the latest Asian country to launch a renewables subsidy scheme and hopes the FIT will help it develop more than 3GW of new renewable capacity by 2020. SEDA expects PV to account for more than one third of this number.