Solar Rooftop in Bangalore

India’s southern IT city of Bangalore may soon see a proliferation of solar rooftop home systems as the distribution utility BESCOM will soon allow “net metering” for its customers. Net Metering is the process of allowing solar rooftop homeowners to sell their excess solar electricity to the grid. This means that home owners do not have to install expensive batteries to store their excess power, as they can bank their electricity in the grid. Some countries such as Germany allow gross metering in which all the electricity generated by solar panels is sold at a higher than normal electricity rate (called feed in tariff).  Bangalore is already home to a huge number of solar water heaters, thanks to the strong government support.

Net Metering is useful for India, as most utilities are power deficient and solar systems can plug the gap without capital investment. This will also reduce the huge amount of T&D losses as solar energy can be mostly consumed at the site of generation. I think that net metering will spread to almost all states in India as it is spreading in major countries such as the USA.

Issues of Net Metering

There are some issues with net metering such as:

a) How to account for the excess electricity

b) What happens if there is a lot of solar electricity generated which can cause grid safety issues

c) Is the excess electricity settled in cash or only kind.

These teething issues will need to be sorted out with regulators, utilities and house owners. Solar energy is still quite expensive, compared to the dirty cheap coal based energy in price terms. However, solar energy is becoming more and more competitive each day and by 2020, solar energy will become equal in costs to fossil fuels even with energy storage.