ith Haryana and Punjab governments allowing net metering benefits for solar rooftop Plants with loads up to 500KW, pressure is on Rajasthan Electricity Regulatory Commission (RERC) to follow suit before the current regime ends in September.
Following a regulatory decision by Union ministry of power last year, RERC had also restricted the net metering load for solar rooftop projects to 10KW from 1MW earlier, but had postponed its implementation till September 15 after the protested.
After the Union power ministry allowed net metering for 500 KW, energy regulators in Haryana and Punjab have notified allowing the same capacity for net metering but RERC is yet to take a call even as the September 15 deadline is a week away. A representative of the Rajasthan Solar Association said they had written letters to energy minister, regulator principal secretary and Rajasthan RENEWABLE ENERGY Corporation to revisit the 10KW criteria and increase the load up to 500KW as has been proposed in the draft regulations by the Union ministry of power.
Under net metering, the consumer uses cheaper rooftop solar power instead of the costly discom power. As per new rules, projects above 10KW will come under gross billing or metering which requires them to pay normal electricity rate to discoms even though they uses cheap power from its rooftop plant. The discoms will pay the rooftop projects owners under gross metering at rates discovered through auction along with 25% incentive which is estimated to be far lower than the discom rates of around Rs 8 per unit.