New policy for rooftop solar panel consumers: Exported, imported units to be billed separately

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) has approved a new settlement mechanism for roof solar panel consumers, introducing separate billing for imported and exported electricity units.

Under the updated policy, exported units would be purchased at a buyback rate of Rs10 per unit, while imported units would be billed at the applicable peak/off-peak rates without taxes and surcharges during the monthly billing cycle.

For any monthly billing cycle, in case the total amount of bill against the units exported by the net metering consumer exceeds the total amount of bill against the units imported from distribution company, the net amount would be credited to the consumer in the subsequent billing cycle(s) and there would be no provision for the consumer to redeem or cash out the credited amount at any point o f time. It was disclosed in the policy guidelines to NEPRA.

NEPRA will provide for the percentage/cap of hosting capacity on each distribution transformers and feeders in accordance with the comprehensive study to be conducted by each distribution company within six months from approval of the guidelines.

NEPRA would ensure the incorporation of updated inverter standards under the legal and regulatory framework, requiring all new net metering consumers to comply. The updated standards compliant inverters would facilitate real-time grid interaction, including voltage and frequency regulation, incorporate anti-islanding protection to prevent back-feeding during outages, enable remote monitoring and control by the distribution company, and support communication interfaces such as Wi-Fi, GSM, or IoT-based monitoring systems. The capacity of proposed distributed generation facility would not exceed the sanctioned load of the consumer’s premises. In case the actual MDI of export units exceeds more than 10pc of sanctioned load, all exported units would not be adjusted/ credited to the consumer bill for the respective billing month as a penalty.

Contract validity period for net metering consumers under the revised regulatory framework, would be limited to five years.

However, the revised framework would not be applicable to the existing net-metered consumers having a valid licence/concurrence and/or agreement executed under the NEPRA (Alternative & Renewable Energy) Distributed Generation and Net Metering Regulations, 2015, and any licence/concurrence issued and/or agreement signed and all rights and obligations accrued thereunder including the rates agreed therein, shall continue to remain effective till the expiry of term of the license/concurrence and/or agreement, whichever is earlier.