Solar Power - Small Scale Grid Tie Power Generation

Solar Power - Small Scale Grid Tie Power Generation

Phetz Zantua

At an alarming rate that the power crisis is creeping in our midst either by limited power generation capacity or by escalating bunker and coal prices, it is but riveting that full implementation of Renewable Act of 2008 has turned into lip service.

It has been 4 years ago when RA 9513 (Renewable Energy Act of 2008) was enacted and yet renewable energy has not yet sink in into general public consciousness. The general public is still left in the dark (pun intended) on the provisions of the law that enables them to become energy independent. All talks are concentrated on large scale commercial Renewable Energy (RE) power generation. There are no mention or public information drive that encourage small scale power generation like house grid-tie systems.

While it is a fact that FIT is still debated and to be agreed upon by major players, there is the provision of the law that is totally neglected. Section 10 of the Act stipulates Net Metering scheme that can be entered between utility provider (e.g. Meralco and consumer), but this provision is not being implemented or encourage to be "enabled."A net metering scheme will encourage house owners to install themselves with Renewable Energy (RE) power generating units such as grid-tied Solar power systems.

There is now current technology that is economically viable to be fitted in household level. There are now systems that can be specified or scaled to provide a percentage of the household demand. The system can also be scaled up to provide electricity generated by a RE source (i.e. solar panels) to even up to 100% of the household demand. 100% can be realized only by full implementation of Section 10 of the law, since in absence of clear regulations on the net metering scheme the household owner will be in trouble explaining to Meralco how come his bill has gone down to Zero consumption. What owners of grid tie solar power system can do now is size their system at a level that they will not export too much of excess electricity or dump their excess since excess exportation of surplus power will yield them nothing in return or in fact put them into trouble if local Meralco offices will treat this phenomena as tampering.

As a private citizen with an adequate know-how of the technology, I have installed in my own household a grid tie Solar panel system. We are now in the second month of operation of the system and we have now reduced our dependency on Meralco by as much as 32%. We have lowered our bill at almost half we pay on average the past year, we were able to cut down our demand from 248 kW-hr (12 month average) to 180 kW-hr (last February billing) and to 149 for March bill’s. There are days when our household demand is lower than what the system is producing, during those days we are exporting power from solar panels to the Meralco grid. The savings if equated to car (Honda City as a reference) milage is almost 96 kilometer driving without filling the tank, and if equated to greenhouse off set value, we off setted an approximate 1 tree already. At the rate of the generation we are making, we are about to off set 12-15 trees in 1 year.

System like mine is still unknown to the public and of course also unknown to Meralco. I will be willing to enter into net metering agreement with Meralco if there is clear scheme that’s been approved by the government (i.e. ERC or DOE or DTI) as stipulated by Section 10 of RA 9513.For immediate action, it is but imperative that the net metering provision of the law should be implemented to encourage small grid tie connections. Grid tie solar power will result in a distributed power generation for direct end users and enabling the system owners to export their excess power to the grid. The system owners can be compensated either by energy credits or paid by an agreed price based on the volume of their exported power. After all the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS, in short their energy mix) value of utility providers (i.e. by Meralco) will increase by accepting into the grid the excess power produce from household solar panels.

Since Solar panels are yet to be sold at an acceptable level to middle class families, households with Solar Panels either grid-tie or off grids, should be given incentives like 5 year suspension of realty tax, access to credits for procurement of panels from US or China and rebates for balance of system procured locally like breakers, cables, and mounting brackets.

It is only the backward thinking, lack of ingenuity and neglect of the government people that discourage the full implementation of the law for the benefit of the suffering Filipinos. And to add insult to injury, the democratization of power generation is left into big business interest who after all are behind those power projects that promote fossil (coal, bunker and diesel) fuel use.