"Open Access" Ideas from Around the Web

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Have you heard this before? The so called "open access" that the Department of Energy will be implementing on September of 2012. Here's the excerpt from different source.

from Sun Star
"Representative Albee Benitez (3rd district, Negros Occidental) said “open access” can help solve the high cost of power in the province. He said the Department of Energy has talked about the so-called “open access” where consumers can purchase power from anywhere in the country.

For this, the transmission lines of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines must be in place and properly installed so that consumers can access power anywhere in the country.

“I think we should not be really be alarmed on the issue of high power rates because open access can give us the choice to source power from other parts of the country that has cheaper excess power. But if we don’t have the infrastructure in place, then it becomes a problem,” he said."

from Philippine Daily Inquirer
"Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras has vowed to start the implementation of open access and retail competition scheme by September 2012, as he expected the Department of Energy (DoE) and other concerned agencies to have threshed out all the issues by then.

“We’re almost 100 percent sure that we will be able to do that by our committed timeline,” Almendras said on the sidelines of the Energy Investment Forum on Tuesday.

The energy secretary said the government has been working hard to solve all the infrastructure, system and procedural challenges and put all the necessary mechanisms in place."

Here's the explaination about Open Access from the Department of Energy.

"What is Open Access?
At present, practically all households and commercial establishments are not free to choose their electricity supplier. There are several generating companies that can supply power but consumers generally buy power only from their local distribution utility.

By the same token, generators/suppliers cannot sell directly to households and commercial establishments. They can only sell to distribution utilities who re-sell the electricity to end-users.

The implementation of the retail open access will break open this supply chain. Retail open access is a condition wherein consumers- industries, commercial establishments and residential users- exercise freedom to choose their respective supplier of electricity whom they deem offers the most reasonable cost and the most efficient service.

The supplier of electricity could be a power generator, distribution utility or an independent aggregator. An aggregator is an electric industry participant who adds together individual power requirements into a size large enough that would enable them to shop for a best deal in the, power market. In like manner, power suppliers can directly transact business with any customer class - commercial establishments and the residentials."

It could be the start of lower electricity cost for us consumers. Let's just hope that the outcome will be a positive one.