Government plans to introduce full net metering in Jamaica, allowing Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) customers to sell electricity generated from renewable energy back to the national grid at the same price they are charged by the utility.

The system, as already practised overseas, allows for a customer's utility meter to be run back as they generate and supply electricity to the national grid and wound forward when they need to rely on JPS to supply their demand because of variables associated with renewables, including hours of sunlight, windspeed, water current and available biomass.

Conroy Watson, Director of Energy in the Ministry of Energy, could not specify whether net metering would be introduced this year or in 2009 but said that JPS had not objected to the proposal, which requires alteration of their existing licence and the redrafting of the Electricity Licensing Act (ELA).

"It is high on the agenda and the government is committed to it. We are working assiduously to get this up as soon as possible. We have had dialogue with JPS and we don't have any objection (from the utility)," said Watson.

The Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR) is currently studying the feasibility of updating its current policy of net billing - a partial form of net metering under which JPS customers selling to the grid are paid less than the utility charges them.
"We are looking at implementing the regime as quickly as possible. We don't have any laws to wait on and it's just a matter of writing the rules on if it makes sense economically," said OUR Director General J Paul Morgan.

Advocates of renewable energy have long pushed for net metering as a significant financial incentive to persuade more Jamaicans to begin generating their own electricity, using technologies such as wind and solar/photovoltaics (PV), and ease the country's dependency on imported oil.

Oil currently provides 95 per cent of Jamaica's energy supply, however government has set a target to raise renewable energy to 15 per cent of the total figure by 2010.
Government has a separate more ambitious target to cut oil imports in half within 10 years.

National oil consumption fell to 28,970,310 barrels last year, down from 29,129,696 in 2006. However, with rising oil prices the bill for this year is expected to exceed the US$2 billion recorded last year.

To meet their targets Government is preparing to table the National Energy Policy together with an accompanying Energy Conservation and Efficiency Policy in Parliament, which is awaiting Cabinet approval.

The thinking of the committee responsible for drafting the policy was that net metering is essential if renewable energy is to be popularised in Jamaica - a position reinforced by public consultations.

"Without net metering there is simply no PV," said Mickael Oerbekke of renewable energy company Eco-Tec who is the former President of the Jamaica Solar Energy Association of Jamaica (JSEA). "Without finance you can't put together the projects and 100 per cent net metering is the only way to do this."

Besides selling to the grid there is an extra incentive associated with net metering since the process effectively uses JPS as a battery. Therefore this does away with the need for batteries, which can account for roughly 30 per cent of the cost of a photovoltaic system, said Oerbekke.

Engineer Stanley Smellie from the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Energy Conservation Project (ECP), who sits on the government committee, said he supported net metering.

UWI has plans to build its own generating capacity using renewable energy, besides ongoing campus-wide energy conservation.

"This will allow UWI to intervene and change the level of consumption (bought from JPS). If oil prices hadn't been going up we would have actually seen our bill going down," said Smellie.

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