Net Metering: A Complex Process in the Philippines

I recently had the opportunity to experience net metering in the Philippines, and I must say it was a learning curve for me. To begin with, my solar setup was installed at Mojave, but Meralco can also do that for you and other jurisdictions or municipalities may have some regulations on that as well. However, the net metering process took around two to three months, and it was not without its challenges.

Firstly, I had to get a permit from City Hall, which seemed like a straightforward process at first. But then there's the paperwork involved with America, which asked me to put in a breaker that we saw earlier. Once the breaker was installed, Meralco could inspect and check the equipment. The booked time was also the actual digital need because Meralco did not have any instock units and I had to apply to the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission). This whole process took some time, but eventually, my net metering was activated.

However, after a couple of months, I noticed that there was no credit being reflected on my bill supposedly under net metering. I was sending Meralco the excess energy that I generated, but it wasn't appearing on my bill. I called them up and asked why this wasn't happening in the background. They told me that they made a mistake and there was a clerical error, but moving forward, they would credit me for the energy that I generated.

What was frustrating for me was that if I couldn't catch that error and didn't report it to them, it would have gone on forever. I would have been sending electricity to Morocco and America wouldn't have been paying me. As a consumer, it's a bit unfair that I'm expected to know these things, especially when it comes to something like net metering.

To give you an idea of how this works, my solar setup generated an excess energy in November 2018. This is the total energy produced because when I sell electricity to Morocco, it's the excess of what I didn't use. The reading was taken on October 2018, and this covers basically the whole month of October. My solar setup generated a total of 153 kilowatts, and the rate is around five pesos and 25 cents per kilowatt.

If we calculate the total credit, it comes out to be around 806 pesos. This is really where you're concerned about ROI (Return on Investment), as it usually takes around ten years for the solar installer to tell you that you can expect to recover your initial investment.

However, if you use the energy for more productive purposes, like I did with crypto mining, then your rate of return will be faster. To be honest, using my energy in a way that contributes less to greenhouse gases is a good feeling. But it's not just about saving money; it's also about knowing that your power consumption isn't contributing to climate change.

The server and solar inverter send you all the data, including your daily consumption and average generation on your monthly generation. You can actually tweak and play around with how much power you're generating, which is a great feeling. I gave them this information because they're not usually associated with selling solar panels, but I get asked a lot about it.

I would wholeheartedly recommend the solar installer that I had, as they were nice guys and did a great job. However, I don't get any commission; I'm just a happy customer who is in turn happy to recommend them.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIt's quite bright outside and I am hanging onfor dear life as you can see to deliveryou this video. So usually here atHardware Sugar we talk about computerhardware but today we'll talk aboutsolar power. Behind me you can see thetips or the borders of the solar panelsI have on my own roof and these panelsare basically maintenance-free. Oncethey're on top of the roof you don'tneed to worry about them anymore. That'sa three kilowatt system that you can seebehind me, there are a whole bunch ofother panels there that we can't get to.Basically once they're up there, oncethey're installed, you don't need toworry about them. I had a good solarinstaller the details of which I willprovide below. They were quite good veryprofessional and quite fast with theinstallation. You notice that there is anew construction behind me there's abuilding going up, this new building willnot cast a shadow so my energyproduction should still be good even ifthat building is taller than my owntownhouse. The next step in the solarprocess, which is the inverter. So I'veclimbed down from the roof and behind meis the next step in the solar setup.Aside from solar panels you will need aninverter which is this thing, becausewhen the solar panels generateelectricity they generate it in a formcalled direct current or DC.Unfortunately, or by design, everythingelse in your house, all the appliancesyour aircons, your TVs, your fridges,microwaves, everything runs onalternating current or AC.So energy from the solar panels isgenerated in DC and our inverter hereconverts that electricity into AC. Andactually the solar panels are verysturdy they will last at least aroundtwenty years or so basically again oncethey're up there you don't need to worryabout them. It's really this inverterthing that usually gives out fromtime to time and you need to be surethat you get a reputable provider andmake sure you keep the warrantyinformation and things like that becauseit's really the inverter which wears outor is the most likely part to break inyour solar setup. And speaking of breakthere's a breaker right here behind meso this green wire is where theelectricity or where the breakerconnects to the solar panels. So thepanel's generate electricity they gofirst here through this breaker whichhas its own.. or you know you can flipthe switches to shut off power or shutoff the feed from the solar panels andthings like that and you notice they'relabeled AC and DC and this particularinverter is by zerver solar it's aChinese company it's pretty coolactually because you can go here andpress this button, this main button andit'll show you how much electricityyou're generating in real time as wellas how much electricity you've generatedfor the day and even doubles up as aWi-Fi hotspot so you can actuallyconnect to this thing when it's whenit's one is being powered right nowso their energy and it was served byWi-Fi repeater connect to your mainWi-Fi and then this is basically asignal booster to your main Wi-Fi andit's also cool because once youconnected to the Internet you candownload all the data I show you howmuch energy of me or you've generatedper day and how much you've generatedover two month and things like that soit will set all of that information to acentral server which you're not going toand you can see all of your data thereso a lot of people who are interested insolar the kind of people who are datafanatics they want they have their Excelfiles and to be honest I don't know or Ihaven't researched a lot of theinverters maybe that standard feature inall of them server solar this inverterwas recommended by our solar installerand we also bought it from him and so Ididn't bother to research anymore aboutother brands and things like that hereyou'll notice the Wi-Fi antenna and aswith most inverters this server sonarone will cut off when there is noexternal power meaning that even ifyou're getting power from the grid fromthe Meralco energy grid from your youknow local power wires when the miracleprinters of because of a brown how thisthing automatically turns off as welleven if there is Sun outside and you aregenerating electricity and the reasonfor that is for the safety of people whomight be working on electric wiresoutside of your house because it'sbrought out they might expect that heyyou know there's no power runningthrough these wires but since you aregenerating power thanks to your solarpanels the wires outside your place arestill live and to ensure that they arenot live to ensure that there's no powerbeing sent out by thethe inverter shuts off automatically sothose are the two main components of anysolar setup are the solar panels and theinverter so if you're going to consumeall of the power that you generate fromyour solar panels then these are theonly two things you need really thesolar panels and the inverter but mostconsumers will be generating more energythan they consume so let's say duringthe day time you generate 10 kilowattsof electricity and uni consumed fivethat means you have five left extra andyou can sell that extra five kilowattsto morello under a scheme they callednet metering basically the energy thatyou produce will be sent from your houseto the closest consumers so that meansyour neighbors you'll actually bepowering the energy needs of yourneighbors and Muraki will pay you forthe excess energy that you generate butto availa flat metering aside from allof the paperwork that you need to dowith merrill or you need one other thingwhich we will go down below of the seaso the last thing you need to enable netmetering is that Morocco will providethis digital meter above it's differentfrom thewhich you usually find in all theirsetupsthis is also something that Meralco willrequire of you the fuse box outside thehouse in a brown out Meralco doesn'ttrust your inverter to turn off thepower being generated by your solarpanels so they insist that you have afew spots outside your house and isactually a me it's actually a mainswitch that you can open and if somebodyflips it that will shut off the power tomy entire house and you'll notice it'snot really that secure because that'sthe whole point of mayoral code thatanybody any any of their linemen canopen the box and turn off the power so Iknow that some people find this insecureand I think it's a bit ofit's a bit of a security risk butunfortunately desert Morocco requiresthis digital meter will record all ofthe energy that you export so again backto our example you produce ten kilowattsof power and you only use five you havean excess of five that you can sell backto the grid that you can sell back toMorocco and Meralco requires thesedigital meters to record how much poweryou are selling back to the grid andit's a good bet that when you see thesedigital meters a lot of them are therebecause the household or the residentsor whatever the business is using solarpanels so if you're interested in solarpower in the Philippines as a regularconsumer that's basically the only threethings that we need the solar panelsthemselves the inverter and finally thedigital electric meter which Moroccowill provide you once you sign a netmetering agreement with them basicallythe net metering agreement is about thepaperwork there also will come overinspect your place you need to get apermit from City Hallbut Meralco can do that for you and atleast in Mojave I assume otherjurisdictions or other municipalitieshave some regulations on that as wellbut the net metering for me took a whileit was around two to three monthsbecause there's a lot of paperworkAmerica will ask you to put that breakerthat we saw earlierand once the breaker is there Meralcobeen inspected and another thing thatbooked time was the actual digital needbecause Meralco did not have any instock units and you need to pass anapplication to the ERC the energyregulatory body and you know there's awhole bunch of paperwork involved inMorocco's net metering and at the end ofthe day Martha was like okay you werefinally good morali net metering isfinally activated but the problem wasafter a couple of months I noticed thatthere was no credit being reflected onmy bill supposedly under net metering Iwas sending Meralco the excess energythat I generated but it wasn't appearingon my build so I called them up and I'mlike I thought I would get credit is itjust happening in the backgroundyou're just not reflecting it on my billand Meralco said that oh you know you'reright we made a mistake and the netmetering wasn't properly applied to youraccount and there's a clerical error butmoving forward we will credit you in theenergy that you are generating and whatwas really frustrating for me was if Icouldn't catch that error and I didn'treport it to them it would have gone onforever I would have been sendingelectricity to Morocco and Americawouldn't have been paying me and as aconsumer it's a bit unfair that I'mexpected to know these things I don'thave any experience or I did not haveany experience with net meteringhow was I supposed to know it wassupposed to reflect on the bill how muchenergy you generated but America's a bigcompanyjust wasn't rumors so what are you goingto do it right but so if you know oncenet metering is activated it will appearon your bill how much energy you aregenerating and for last month this wasthis reading was taken November 2018 sothis covers basically October 2018 mysolar setup generated an excess becausethis is the energy because when I sellto Morocco is the excess of what Ididn't use the total energy I saw was153 kilowatts and the rate is aroundfive pesos and 25 cents per kilowatt soI got the total credit of around 806pesos and so that's really where you'reconcerned on ROI comes into playusually the solar installers will tellyou to expect that you can get thereturn on your investment after tenyears yes it does take some time torecoup or to recover the initialinvestment of paying for the hardwarethe solar panels and the inverter andthen the labor for installation andthings like that so usually it's aroundten years but if you use that energy formore productive purposes meaning you'rejust not sending it to Morocco butyou're using it to make money because tobe honest what I did with my energy wasI was script on my knees I was miningcerium and that's a whole different bagof worms and maybe I'll do a video onthat later on but if you're using theenergy for more productive means like Idid for crypto mining then your rate ofreturn will befaster or it will be quicker than theexpected thing years and to be honest itis a good feeling that you've beenthrown on the aircon during a very hotday and you know that your powerconsumption is not contributing to thegreenhouse gases in the atmosphere orbecause you're not using the energy fromthe grid and if you're interested indata again the server solar inverterwill send you all of that your dailyconsumption and your average generationon your monthly generation so you canactually tweak and play around with howmuch power you can generate I'm a givenday and you can experiment like well ifI run my aircon I was only able toexport this much versus if I have keptthe aircon off and so it's not foreverybody I gave them this is notsomething Hardware sugar usually doesand we do not sell solar panels but Iget asked a lot about it and so Ithought I would do a simple video on itthere many questions please leave themin the comments below I will also givethe details of our solar installerbecause I really good experience withthem they're nice guys and if you'reconsidering your own set up I wouldwholeheartedly recommend them I do notget any Commission I'm just a happycustomer who is in turn happy torecommend theanyway\n"