Netmetering In Action!

Joe Joson , USA

November 6,  2014 

Watching your good old kwhr meter spinning fast in the opposite direction is one of the most exciting things one could ever experience in the world of PVs and net metering. Remember turning on your rickety, old and energy hog of an air conditioning unit and watching your kwhr meter spinning really fast making  you sweat hard thinking about your next electric bill? 

No mas! Thanks to PVs (photo voltaics) or solar power systems and net metering. We can now turn our air conditioners full blast and really get relaxed and stay cool!

And what is my definition of net metering?  It is simply a  feature of the PV system that enables us to  monitor the difference between the kwhrs fed by the grid into our house and the kwhrs fed by our PVs into the grid and get paid for the difference! And with net metering we can have a very small bill to pay at the end of each month. Looking at your very small electric bill  as a result of net metering is simply ‘very refreshing’!

But as easy and nice as it sounds, we do have a few things to watch out for when installing our PVs and hooking them up to the grid.  

Safety first .  So we joined the facebook group called Solar Power Philippines and learned lots of things from lots of folks. We get excited and buy our solar equipment, wire them up and fire them up. Lo and behold it is true, it is saving us electrical energy!

But there was one thing that we did not do since we just copied our next door neighbor. Our neighbor across the street bought his stuff, installed them and he seems to be doing fine. So we simply copy what he did. We failed to register our system to the local utility company. We did not let them know we have solar PV system on our roof that is connected to the grid. When we are receiving electrical service from any of the utility companies, we are connected to the grid.  When we connect our solar power system (PV) to the same main circuit breaker box servicing our homes, we now have a grid-tied PV.  Here are a few things that happen when we do not tell the utility company that we have solar on our roofs that are tied up to the grid:

1.     First, we miss our opportunity to get paid for the power that we send out to the utility grid as provided for by net metering (if we generate excess power during the day).

2.     Second, when linemen are out there working on the grid they turn their power off.  Now if your PV system is not configured to shut down when the utility power is down, you stand a chance of zapping the lineman with the power coming from your PV! Not all linemen are smart and not all of them will assume that after he turned his power off, the line is still live since some PVs are running and feeding power to the grid.

3.     Third, granted that you did your homework and configured your PV so that it will automatically shut off or disconnect from the grid  when grid  power is out to protect our lineman, there is yet another headache that remains for most of our neighbors who have no solar.

4.     As the number of unregistered PV’s connect to the grid, Meralco starts to see a noticeable amount of drop in power usage and of course a matching loss of revenue for them. Meralco would normally look at this as losses from meter tampering, illegal connections and yes, perhaps unregistered PV systems.

5.     Now, Meralco folks are not dummies. I heard they have computer programs that automatically tweak the real time rates of customers in an area affected by such losses. This rate adjustment, an increase, are reflected on ALL the households in the area affected to compensate for the drop in revenue. Meralco and all distribution utilities (DUs) have to maintain an income threshold, so I heard.

6.     So, while we PV enthusiasts enjoy the drop in our electric bills, I heard that that gain, which is loss to the utility company is then automatically passed on to the rest of the folks in the same affected area. Let us not give the utility companies or distribution utilities any excuses to raise our rates.

Make a long story short, let us hook up our PVs right and let us do our net metering right and allow ourselves and our neighbors to reap the same benefits that it brings.  Maraming salamat mga bossing na solaristas.  

The following link is one of the many sources of net metering guidelines for the Philippines: 

http://www.giz.de/fachexpertise/downloads/giz2013-en-net-metering-reference-guide-philippines.pdf                                            



Joe Joson

714 348 2661

Marketing: FVV Electrical , Orange, CA

Communications, Marketing, Consulting

Lim Solar Philippines 

Mendoza Solar , LLC -California/Nevada Corporation

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