I HAVE been an enthusiast of renewable energy for over a decade. Early this year, I saved enough money, over Rs750,000, to have a 5.4kV solar system installed in my house. I went for an on-grid system, hoping that for most of the year we would be producing more electricity than we would be consuming and, hence, our bill would come out in the negative.

I was aware of the other options, like off-grid and hybrid systems. In both these cases, one would need to buy a different type of inverter plus batteries. The system I chose, on-grid with net-metering, did not require any batteries. Whatever power our solar panels produce would directly be sent through the inverter to the K-Electric (KE) grid and whatever we use would come to us from the grid directly as before installation of the solar panels.

The only difference now is that instead of the old meter, we now have a bidirectional smart meter which keeps track of units sent from our panels to the grid and units taken by our appliances; hence the name net-metering.

There was one little detail to which I did not pay enough attention. When there is loadshedding done by KE, or the system shuts down for any reason, we would need some type of backup, like a UPS unit or a generator. At the time when I was signing up for the on-grid net-metering deal, there were hardly any period of loadshedding or power breakdown, and going for a hybrid system would add considerable additional cost of batteries which would need periodic replacements as well.

Now when the KE has started resorting to frequent and extensive loadshedding, there is another concern to pay attention to. During loadshedding, there is no power being exported to the grid. Our panels are producing electricity, but it is neither being stored nor exported.

If we had chosen a hybrid system, the power produced by our panels would be stored by the battery pack, and used for household consumption any time of the day or night. As things stand, if there is a four-hour day-time loadshedding, we are losing about Rs100 per day.

So, if you are thinking of getting solar panels, go with a hybrid system if you can afford the extra cost of batteries. I am not sure about the cost difference between an inverter and a hybrid inverter which would have connectivity to the battery pack as well to the grid plus a smart switch which would guide the current either way.

While I am at it, let me point out that KE is not following the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) rules of payment to customers who are giving more units to KE than what they are getting from it. Also, there is a difference in the rates at which KE buys from us and the rate at which they pay us for the units supplied.

The difference between selling and buying rates is quite huge, and the rate at which KE sells power would keep on increasing, while the rate at which it buys from us is frozen. The gap keeps widening, which, to say the least, is unfair.

S. Arif Kazmi Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2022