As Pakistan seeks renewable solutions to its power crisis, the Power and energy sector has come up with an innovative, convenient and effective way to add a few thousand megawatts of power to the national grid.
With the state failing to fulfill the country’s energy needs, consumers in Pakistan –on private and commercial levels- have started generating their own renewable solar power. The government wants to take this trend a step further by encouraging consumers to generate electricity and sell off the excess to the government through ‘Net Metering’. The legal framework for this mechanism has already been designed by the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) Pakistan.
Net metering is a billing mechanism that enables individuals producing their own solar energy to provide the excess energy to the national grid and get credited back for its retail price. If a consumer that has his own solar energy generation system generates more energy than he consumers, the excess energy will be credited and the user will get paid for it. While this mechanism is a bit complicated, there are specialized electricity meters for this.
AEDB recently approved the certification regulation for Net metering to facilitate consumers interested in contributing to the national grid.
Endorsing this concept, the chairman of AEDB said that not only will this development push the country towards renewable solutions to the energy crises in the country, but would also provide consumers with monetary incentive to produce their own energy. He anticipated that this move could add 5000 to 7000 MW of energy to the national grid.
He further added, “We are bringing the profitable business of electricity generation to people’s doorstep”.
The Government aims to use this solar energy to power 10,000 tube wells in the first phase of the project. This revolutionary step will definitely leave its positive impact of the county in a very short period of time.