A MINDANAO congressman has sought a congressional inquiry into the alleged reduction of the capacity of solar photovoltaic power plants to only 50 megawatts  from the initial 235 MW under the Renewable Energy Law.

In filing House Resolution No. 1785, Bukidnon Rep. Florencio Flores, Jr. said the inquiry intends to shed light on the issue and resolve the problems brought about by the move of the Department of Energy.

"The DoE and the National Renewable Energy Board  should explain to the House committee on energy as to the rationale for the drastic reduction they made in the capacity of solar PV power plants for initial implementation under Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008," said Flores.

Flores said the DoE reduced the initial capacity of 269 MW for solar PV power plants to only 235MW until 2015 as recommended by the NREB on the very day the National Renewable Energy Program was launched on June 14, 2011.

Flores said the DoE submitted to the Energy Regulatory Commission during the hearing on the petition for Feed-in-Tariffs that only 50 megawatts of solar PV power plants will be initially implemented.

"However, after the launching of the NREP, the DoE has been reducing, for reasons known only to people within the DoE, the capacity for initial implementation of solar PV projects," said Flores.

Flores said among the available alternatives for constructing power plants in Mindanao, solar PV plants are the fastest to attain operational status.

"It would take only one year or less to construct 100 MW or more of solar PV power plants spread out all over Mindanao. It would take more than one year to construct the next fastest alternative, oil-fueled power plants," said Flores.

Flores said the rate of impact to the end consumer if 100MW of solar power capacity to be added to the Mindanao grid would only come to around 2.28 centavos per kilowatt-hour compared to P0.60-1.00 per kWh for oil-fueled power plants, increasing with the number of hours per month that the power plants would operate.

Flores said there is now a shortage of power capacity in Mindanao.

"Solar power offers the fastest option to the power crisis in Mindanao which needs to add at least 200 MW to the existing capacity of power plants within one year in order to avert rotating brownouts that would put hundreds of thousands of customers in the dark over long periods of time," said Flores.