Economic analysis of net metering regulations for residential consumers in Pakistan

Abstract

Net metering is used to incentivize the distributed generation owners. It is introduced in Pakistan with the aim to promote the building integrated local generation. Presently, it is hard to find any study on the economic incentive indicators of the net metering policy for residential customers in Pakistan. This paper presents the economic evaluation of net metering benefits to the individual residential consumers in the presence of Building Integrated PV (BIPV) system under current net metering regulations in Pakistan. The energy demand of the individual apartments and the common area services inside the building is calculated by means of daily energy usage of the residents for a typical day. The aggregate demand of the residential building, comprising of 100 residential units and common area services, is calculated. The estimation of power profiles of the PV generation system is carried out with the help of PVGIS. At the end, the economic analysis of the proposed net metering scheme is presented. The net metering policy is found to be feasible up-to 50 kWp PV capacity when it is applied on the common area services only and the billing is carried out individually. When it is implemented on the aggregate energy demand of the entire residential building, the annual savings are observed for installed PV capacity above 80 kWp.