CLOSE TO 200 customers of the Barbados Light & Power Company have signed on to the Renewable Energy Rider (RER) initiative which is designed to facilitate the sale of their excess electricity from solarĀ or wind systems to the grid.
And the regulator, the Fair Trading Commission (FTC), has determined it will adopt one of two types of billing arrangements considered where only the excess is sold to the grid and not the ābuy all/sell allā method which would have required that all electricity generated be sold to and purchased from the grid.
āThis billing approach,ā the FTC said, in a decision released yesterday, āis supported by the two-meter alternative metering connection 1 only, as it is the only configuration that monitors gross sale between the customer and the utility.
āThe āsale of excessā billing arrangement also offers the customer the intangible comfort of retaining direct use of what they produce if they have a bimodal inverter or batteries. This approach lowers the customerās consumption from the grid, thus lowering the tier in which he/she is billed and the customer charged ā benefitsĀ of self-generation.
The FTCās decision followed a review to assess newly proposed terms and conditions of the RER programme which the BL&PĀ is seeking to implementĀ on a permanent basis.