The Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission (KSERC) has sought responses from the industry to its draft net metering policy.
The last date for submission of comments is 28 February 2014.
The policy titled Draft KeralaState Electricity Regulatory Commission (Grid Interactive Distributed Solar Energy Systems) Regulations, 2014 is expected to attract interest from developers that look at third party ownership models.
Kerala’s net metering policy is open to all consumers across the state unlike Tamil Nadu’s net metering policy that is limited to residential consumers, or Andhra Pradesh’s policy that is limited only to consumers that have three phase connections.
Kerala is trying to follow a policy similar to Uttarakhand’s net metering policy that allows third party ownership models.
The draft policy does not set an upper cap on amount of energy that can be banked. The net metering policies of Delhi and Tamil Nadu – both suggest a maximum cap of 90 percent of the consumer’s energy requirement in a calendar year.
The policy also prescribes that the DISCOM need to pay the consumer the Average Pooled Purchase Cost (APPC) of INR 1.99/kWh for the excess energy injected onto the grid after the banking settlement – a first in India. This is perfect for consumers that want to capitalize on excess rooftop space. With this, Kerala consumers will not be limited by the maximum energy that can be injected on to the grid, said BridgetoIndia in its report.
This policy has a sharing concept wherein a consumer that has several premises across the state, can install a solar plant on one location and wheel the excess power to the other locations. Though, this entails a wheeling charge of 5 percent, this is a perfect opportunity for IT companies, textile mills and other retail outlets that may have multiple locations in the state. This way, the consumer can optimize on the ideal rooftop space and minimize installation and maintenance cost.
The policy limits system sizes to 3 MW.
The connection voltages include: System size of 5 KW or under to be connected at 240 V (single phase); System size of 100 KW or under to be connected at 415 V (three phase); System size of 3 MW or under to be connected at 11 KV.
This policy prescribes a penetration limit of 50 percent of every distribution transformer capacity. For instance, if a certain locality has a distribution transformer capacity of 1 MVA, then 500 kW of solar capacity shall be approved on a first-come-first-serve’ basis. This limit is significantly higher than Delhi’s limit of 15 percent and Tamil Nadu’s limit of 30 percent.