Impact of Net-metering on bill savings

Abstract
The modernization of grid and increased renewable penetration
had led to a requirement of the alternative tariff mechanisms for con-
sumers. The increasing PV deployment trend, as well as implementa-
tion of smart meters under smart grid pilot projects in India, opened
up avenues for alternative retail rates and net metering policies. The
rooftop PV deployment had led to an increase in number of net me-
tered consumers. The present work studies the impact of different
retail the rate mechanisms on bill savings of net metered consumers,
with increasing solar penetration scenario. Seven different scenarios,
based on increasing solar penetration in the energy mix, are designed.
After simulating wholesale electricity prices through a unit commit-
ment based energy system model, retail rates (two time invariant and
three time variant) are designed using simulated - electricity prices.
To evaluate the impact of increasing PV penetration on consumer eco-
nomics, the electricity bills of 97 net metered consumers are calculated
using designed retail rates for all the scenarios. It is observed from
the results, that the value of bill savings decreases with increasing PV
penetration for all the retail rates. Also, decrease in value of bill sav-
ings is more in the time variant rates as compared to time invariant
rates
a2 + b2 + 2ab = (a + b)2

1 Introduction
[1] The country’s economic and industrial development depends primarily on
the sustainable and reliable electric power supply. The transition to renew-
able and sustainable energy technologies has become unavoidable with the

1
depletion of fossil-fuels and serious environmental concerns. Net metering is
a regulatory framework that allows grid-tied Distributed Generation (DG)
owners to partially or completely cover their energy needs and get paid for
any additional energy injection in the grid at net metering tariffs set by regu-
latory bodies. Sometimes called a’ prosumer’ is a customer with a generation
facility. For net metering, an electric meter is used, which spins in both di-
rections and tracks the net energy usage as well as the prosumers’ net excess
injection into the grid. When reporting net usage and net excess injection
separately, an alternative metering system can also be used with two basic
metres. The prosumer is paid for the total electricity usage at the end of
the billing cycle. If the net excess injection exceeds the net consumption,the
pecuniary benefits are provided to the user at the levels pre-decided by the
utility.

c u rre n t

1 0

8
c u rre n t (A m p h e re s )

0
0 2 4 6 8 1 0
V o lta g e ( O h m )

Figure 1: Voltage vs current

2
 1 2 3 4
4 5 6 7
7 8 9 10

Table 1: Numbers

References
[1] N. R. Darghouth, G. Barbose, and R. H. Wiser, “Customer-economics of
residential photovoltaic systems (part 1): The impact of high renewable
energy penetrations on electricity bill savings with net metering,” Energy
Policy, vol. 67, pp. 290–300, 2014.