ABSTRACT

Pakistan has massive potential to produce solar energy and in the future solar energy can immensely contribute into energy mix. Mainly, the solar deployment is promising for future energy as its feasibility assessment can reduce the energy import bill and the country energy demand. Pakistan introduces distribution generation facility under net metering rules regulation for small scale solar system. Around 58% of electricity produced in the region from fossil fuel and only 2.4% from renewable energy although the country blessed with RE potentials.

The tariff rate of electricity consumption is highest in Pakistan due to the dependency of energy production on fossil fuel. And the cost of small-scale solar energy production reached to the grid parity. The DG facility under net metering scheme in Pakistan allow the solar system users to produced own electricity. The DG facility users can get two type of incentives, that is, energy compensation and monetary compensation for export energy to grid, only if the DG facility fulfil the criteria of net metering rules regulation. In the literature net metering and net billing are loosely describe as a net metering scheme or DG facility under net metering scheme. Both the schemes allow the customer to export excess electricity to the national grid. Under net metering scheme the consumers get energy compensation while under net billing support the consumers financially for excess electricity export to the grid.

The study assessed both the incentive of DG facility under net metering rules regulation as a net metering and net billing scheme in Pakistan. The energy production software has been used in the study, climatological data base and by putting the technical and financial parameters to estimate the technical and economic performance of solar modules under net metering and net billing schemes. The result indicated that the net metering scheme provide high rate of returns if the household goes for energy compensation, and can reduce his electricity bills up to zero and consume exported electricity in the next month. On the other hand, net billing has attractive rate of returns to invest on solar system. But slightly lower than net metering. Despite the fact that, rules and regulation are settled for DG facility in Pakistan where the customer have dis-incentive to go for monetary benefits. The net metering rules regulation has implemented by NEPRA. Further, the dissertation results that the government policy is more balanced and encouraging for investment on solar system up to certain level and the net export billing of DG facility should be smooth to attract the participants to invest on rooftop solar photovoltaic system