Malaysia’s Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) has closed 2013 applications for its solar rooftop feed-in tariff after receiving an overwhelming demand for the latest quota it made available.
SEDA said the 1,500kW solar quota it released for individual applicants in September was all gone within one hour.
The authority said it would not release any further quotas this year as successful applicants would be unlikely to achieve commercial operation of their installations by December this year. After this a punitive degression rate of 8% for individuals and 20% for non-individuals will come into effect.
“We released 1,500 kW of solar PV quota [for] individuals on September 18 2013 and the response received was overwhelming. The quota was all gone within an hour,” said Datin Badriyah.
The FiT for individuals under Malaysia’s Solar Home Rooftop Programme has proved extremely popular since its launch in September last year, with earlier quota releases selling out in similarly short periods to September’s. To date SEDA has approved 2,279 applications for individuals totalling 24.43MW, of which 8.98MW has commenced operation.
Overall, since Malaysia introduced its renewable energy FiT in 2011, 2,628 applications for 484.03MW of capacity have been approved across all forms of generation.
PV for individuals and at a larger scale has proved the most popular form of generation, accounting for almost 40% of approved FiT capacity – a total of 192.26MW.
However, completion of approved projects has been slow to happen, with only 11.8.19MW of all FiT-approved projects having commenced operation.
SEDA said it had had a dialogue with successful solar FiT applicants to update them on the FiT mechanism and the planned degression process.
You can find out more about Solar in Malaysia at Solar Energy Southeast Asia 2013: a major new international, top-level conference which aims to support and accelerate the deployment of solar energy – both on- and off-grid – throughout the region. For full conference programme, visit http://seasia.solarenergyevents.com/programme
