- Some form of net metering is now proposed by lectricit de France. According to their website, energy produced by home-owners is bought at a higher price than what is charged as consumers. Hence, some recommend to sell all energy produced, and buy back all energy needed at a lower price.
- Instead, these homes supply electricity to the wider electric grid when the sun is shining, and buy electricity from the grid when its not. To account for that, many states use a billing policy called net metering. Put simply, net metering is a math problem: each month, the utility calculates how much utility-generated electricity a customer used, then subtracts the solar electricity they supplied to the grid before calculating their bill.
Net metering will not allow you to live off the grid because you still share energy with the utility company. However, it makes you less dependent on the grid overall. Homeowners and utility companies that embrace net metering programs can enjoy several benefits.
- Unlike traditional electric meters that only measure electricity flowing into your home, bidirectional meters can measure electricity flowing in both directions into your home from the grid and out of your home to the grid.
- Net metering programs vary widely. Utilities and regulators use different frameworks to compensate homeowners for the energy they export. Here are some of the most common policies: Homeowners earn credits at full retail rate for every kilowatt-hour sent to the grid, so each exported kWh offsets one youd otherwise buy. This is the most traditional form of net metering, hence why its also known as true net metering.
The type of net metering described above is the simplest example of the practice and is also called true net metering or 1-for-1 net metering because the utility offers credit for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity sent to the grid, which can be redeemed toward a kWh used when the sun isnt shining. When a homeowner gets a solar energy system installed, the utility replaces their electric meter with a new bi-directional meter, which can record the energy the solar panels export to the grid and the energy the customer takes from the grid when the solar panels arent making enough power to run the homes appliances.
