Net Metering – a distant dream

Despite severe energy shortage in the country and the need to have as much decentralised power generation as possible, none of the power distribution companies (DISCOs) across the country have stepped up to offer net metering facility to its consumers which would enable the commercial and residential customers to help generate their own energy through solar panels.

This is despite the fact NEPRA regulations were changed in September last year to account for such a system. Net metering allows the consumers to contribute their surplus energy to the national grid.

These views were expressed by experts at a roundtable session titled “Net Metering: An Alternate Source of Power for Electricity Consumers?” at the Institute of Policy Studies. They expressed the hope that the required tactical and resource planning to facilitate this modern approach towards solving the country’s energy crisis would be carried out in a few months.

The session was chaired by former federal secretary and IPS’ Tawanai (energy) Programme Chairman Mirza Hamid Hassan and addressed by NEPRA Standard Department Director Mazhar Iqbal Ranjha, IESCO Chief Engineer Planning Wajid Ali Kazmi and Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) Energy Committee member Faiz Muhammad Bhutta. The session was attended by a number of energy experts, government officials, academicians and industry representatives.

Outlining the regulations approved by NEPRA, Ranjha expressed his discontent over the response on the lack of technology options offered by DISCOs across the country for implementation of the regulations.

He said that if subsidies given by the government over fuel prices were rather given on renewable energy technology and devices like solar panels, the energy shortage could have been significantly alleviated as the net metering would allow the consumers to contribute energy back to the national grid.

Kazmi negated the impression and revealed that IESCO had already developed an SOP for net metering and was set to start implementing this technology at the parliament house as a pilot project with the redistribution capacity of one megawatt through the solar power plant recently installed there.

He admitted that while the implementation of net metering at the government institution was symbolic in nature potentially providing the concept a much needed boost, there was still a lot of work needed in order to popularise the technology at the household level.

He observed that the response of IESCO was a bit slow because of technical issues like absence of a billing software for the purpose and training of the field staff and officers who were yet to be equipped with the expertise and knowledge pertaining to the technology.

He, however, claimed that the initial hurdles would be removed as early as possible and IESCO was already taking steps to build the capacity of all the relevant stakeholders in this regard by conducting capacity building workshops.

Bhutta recommended a few amendments in NEPRA’s statutory regulatory order (SRO) through which the net metering regulations have been approved. The recommendations included reduction of the period of 100 days for application processing and declaration of interconnectivity study charges on different categories of applications.

Some of the participants called for introducing one window solutions for net metering application procedures and also raised questions over some ambiguities in the NEPRA regulations as the net metering technology was already being employed in a number of countries across the world and, according to them, Pakistan could simply study and follow their best practices instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Hasan summed up the session terming the formulation of net metering regulations a good sign while maintaining that the on-ground implementation of these regulations could take some more time.

He also stressed the popularisation of renewable resources of energy in the country, especially solar energy, so that the net metering concept of community participation for power generation could be implemented successfully.