Abstract
The electrical infrastructure around the globe is expanding at a rapid rate for the sake of fulfilling power demands in the domestic, commercial and entertainment industries aiming to boost the living standards. In this regard, renewable energy sources (RES) are globally accepted potential candidates for maintaining inexhaustible, clean, and reliable electricity with a supplementary feature of economic prospect. The efficiency of power distribution at reduced cost to the consumers can be further enhanced by introducing a two-way billing system so-called net-metering which has the potential to overcome issues such as voltage regulation, power blackouts, overstressed grid and need for expensive storage systems thereby making it beneficial for the grid and the end user. This envisioning has encouraged the Government of Pakistan to install net-metering infrastructure at places which accommodate surplus renewable energy reserves. According to the Electric Power Act 1997, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) issued the net-metering rules and regulations in September 2015 by the endorsement of Federal Government which allowed the distribution companies in Pakistan to buy surplus electricity units generated by the consumers in order to partly reimburse the units imported from the utility grid. The aim behind this research work is to promote renewable energy utilization through net-metering mechanism in order to achieve maximum power. The export of units from consumer side to utility grid and vice versa can be made through bidirectional energy meter. In this paper, a solar net-metering analysis has been carried out on ETAP software to determine its benefits in a distribution network. Different scenarios have been investigated, and it is concluded that solar net-metering technique has multiple influential benefits, e.g., improvement in voltage regulation, reduction in transmission and distribution losses, increase in power availability, less billing to consumers, and reduction of loading on utility grid.
Highlights
In Pakistan, the energy demand is growing by more than nine percent annually, and it is predicted that an increase in energy demand will be eightfold by 2030 and twenty-fold by 2050 [1]
In 2015, the rules and standards on a net-metering scheme were defined by National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) by allowing Distribution Companies (DISCOS) to take/purchase excess energy units generated by renewable energy sources from consumer side at the same rates prescribed by the company [4]
It can be seen that there is a notable improvement in voltage profile in Case 2 by Case 1 and more improvement in Case 3 by Case 2, which means as more as the solar is feeding to the utility grid by a solar net-metering mechanism, the more will be the improvement in voltage profile
Summary
In Pakistan, the energy demand is growing by more than nine percent annually, and it is predicted that an increase in energy demand will be eightfold by 2030 and twenty-fold by 2050 [1]. In 2015, the rules and standards on a net-metering scheme were defined by NEPRA by allowing DISCOS to take/purchase excess energy units generated by renewable energy sources from consumer side at the same rates prescribed by the company [4]. For renewable energy users such as solar and wind energy, the net-metering mechanism is very attractive as it allows the end users to consume all their generated electrical energy, depending upon their need or to transfer extra electrical energy/all generated electrical energy to utility grid by bidirectional billing mechanism. The weather conditions, e.g., humidity, dust, fog, and clouds affect the solar irradiance, yet, the amount of solar energy reaching the earth is about 80% in clear and bright days Having such a special geographical area, Pakistan receives the solar radiations continuously the whole year, and average solar radiation is approximately 9 hours [6]. 4 units are in operation and synchronized with the national grid, each having a 100 MW capacity [9]
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