Net Metering & Customer-Generated Power (aka Small Independent Power Producers) – great ideas for Hawaii

Around the world, household production of excess electricity is being fed back into the community electricity grid. Rather than building billions of dollars in new power plants, new-build and retrofit individual households, small businesses, and government  agencies are installing solar panel arrays on their roof tops and creating new sources of energy.

When the energy these local systems create is fed into the power grid it can be used to offset electricity that the site pulls from the grid (at night for example). This  is called net-metering. Even if the system generates more electrical power than it consumes, there is never a profit margin allowed under net  metering, it is  just a net exchange that never exceeds the value of the power pulled from the grid.

In 2008, 33,500 rooftop solar systems were installed in the United States, a 63 percent increase over the amount of capacity installed in 2007.

In optimal situations, not only is there a record kept of the net metered point of production, when the system generates excess electricity beyond its own net metered amount, the customer can sell that excess to the utility. This excess power produced on individual roof tops is then shared with neighbors in a local power generation network. The income earned by selling excess power back to the  utility takes place under customer-generated power agreements.

In Hawaii, net metering is beginning to become more common but we are only allowed to earn back the equivilent of the energy we draw from the grid during non-solar hours. We do not yet have customer-generated power agreements as an option. We need to!

In Germany, as in the State of Washington, there are examples of power grid utility systems that not only allow a small household producer to offset their own utility use and costs, but that  encourage people to begin producing energy that they sell for a fair price to the community grid. This grid-tied system of  net metering is  creating a new generation of Small Independent  Power Producers.

In  Washington, with Puget Sound  Electric for example, the earnings from  the kilowatts sold back to the grid currently vary from$.15 kwh, if non-Washington built components are used, up to $.32 kwh if all components are built in  Washington. Keep in mind that their recent electricity rates are $.08kwh when buying from the utility (vs $.30 kwh+ in Hawaii) and even the $.15 kwh buy back includes an attractive profit margin incentive for production. Washington Renewables and Incentives  Northwest Solar Center  Puget Sound Electric