The Philippine Solar Power Alliance (PSPA) has asked the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to correct the payment scheme for homeowners with solar rooftop facilities exporting excess power to grid.
Through a position paper submitted to the ERC, the solar company expressed their need to correct the payment system as the present mechanism is contradictory to the Renewable Energy Law of 2008.
The PSPA described the manner on how utility companies compute credits due to the homeowners who sell their excess power to the grid.
PSPA President Tetchi Capellan said, that under the law, “a net-metering customer is only charged for his net electricity consumption and is credited for any overall contribution to the electricity grid,”
“Electric power generated by an end-user may be used to offset electric energy provided by the utility company to the end-user during the applicable period. Thus, the net-metering customer is only charged or credited, as the case may be, the difference between its import energy and export energy,” she added.
She said that a lower kilowatt price for exported energy, generation charge should be applied to calculate the credits due for solar rooftop owners.
Capellan said that ERC net-metering rules are about the exchange of energy, “one offsetting the other,” and that a user should only be charged by net of the energy exchange which is the difference between import and export.
The solar official added that that’s not how net – metering customers are paid for now.
