‘Net-metering can advance renewable energy uptake in Pakistan’

KARACHI: Power consumers can reduce their bills by installing solar power panels on their rooftops and connecting them with the national grid, energy experts said on Wednesday.

The government pays consumers a price of the electricity that their solar panels inject into the grid through a system called net-metering, the experts explained speaking at a webinar ‘Net-metering in Pakistan: Potential, Challenges and Way Forward’ held on Wednesday by Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (PRIED).

The energy experts advocated that net-metering could reduce electricity bills and also contribute in curbing power shortages. However, the opportunity was not being fully utilised because of the financial barriers consumers face in installing solar panels, they pointed.

Naila Saleh, project manager at Agora EW and technical advisor at PRIED, said net-metering could advance renewable energy uptake in the country and reduce dependency on unreliable power supply.

“Distributed solar photovoltaic [PV] systems can shift electricity generation from fossil fuels and supply more affordable energy than the grid does. Yet, the overall growth in net-metered systems in the past seven years remains insignificant in Pakistan,” she said.

Saleh added that easy financing was critical to adopt capital-intensive technologies such as solar PV, which has a high upfront cost, but lower operating costs. “Limited adoption of the State Bank’s 2016 concessionary financial scheme for solar PV and its restricted access to a larger section of the society is a key barrier to its wide-scale diffusion.”

Atif Pervez, battery research lead at NanoXplore Inc., Canada, said battery energy storage that is integrated into a renewable energy setup was important to enhance grid reliability and resilience while facilitating decarbonisation.

“Regular grid failures and rolling blackouts due to energy crisis are common in Pakistan. Battery storage, coupled with solar panels can provide low maintenance and low carbon footprint solution during continuous power outages,” Pervez explained.

Ameena Sohail, managing partner at Precision Advocates and Consultants, emphasised the need to practice a ‘non-discriminative’ distribution of power to all consumers. She suggested including customer service regulations in net-metering licenses and incentivising power distribution companies (DISCOs) to resolve supply chain issues and delays in meter installations.

Discussing challenges faced by DISCOs, Amjad Aslam, deputy manager regulations, Peshawar Electric Supply Company highlighted obstacles in slow uptake of new net metering connections such as lack of technical training, legacy power infrastructure, non-uniform standards of net metering equipment, and revenue erosion.