A rebate or cost-offsetting mechanism has been proposed for residential end-users who are gearing up to participate in the net metering system in the renewable energy industry.

“We have proposed cost offsetting in the form of credits in the guidelines that we have submitted – that’s for residential which are interested in net metering,” National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) chairman Arthur N. Aguilar disclosed.

The proposal is to integrate the cost-offsetting scheme in the feed-in-tariff (FIT), but this will depend on the final ruling that shall be rendered by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Aguilar clarified that the case for commercial end-users wanting to put up RE capacity, like solar system for their own use, will also be treated differently.

The policy entails the use of special metering system. Basically, according to Aguilar, there will be two meters – one to measure export kilowatt hours (kWh); and the other, to measure import kWh.

Net metering is a component of RE policy wherein consumers who generally own small-scale RE energy facilities such as solar power, wind or home fuel cells, are allowed to sell to a distribution utility (DU) their excess capacity net of their own consumption.

The patent reference to “net” in this policy context would be on “what would be the balance after deductions.” For contributing its capacity, the owner of the RE system will have to be compensated through credits that might be reflected in his/her billing.

It was further explained that the credits or rebate system will cover payments for export kWh in the form of reduction that will be credited to the customer’s next monthly bill.

At deliberation phase, the NREB considered policy propositions that the concerned DUs may be able to impose a new metering charge charge (for new customers) or an incremental metering charge (for existing customer) to specifically reflect the cost of the net metering facilities installed by particular DUs.

Department of Energy assistant secretary Mario Marasigan indicated that the formulation of the corresponding RE policies have been drumming up the interest of prospective RE developers.