The Jamaica Renewable Energy Association (JREA) is insisting that the Government make amendments to the Electricity (Net Billing) Regulations 2022 which was recently approved in the House of Representatives.

Net Billing allows Jamaica Public Service (JPS) customers who own renewable energy generators, such as wind turbines and photovoltaic (solar) systems, to generate electricity for personal use as well as sell excess energy to JPS at wholesale or “avoided cost” prices set by the Office of Utilities Regulaiton (OUR).

The regulations are intended to provide opportunities for fuel diversification, development, and deployment of renewable energy sources.

President of the JREA Alex Hill told the Jamaica Observer that, despite the crucial role his members play in completing applications for net billing as well as paying the fees, they were never consulted in the drafting of the regulations.

He argues that there are “incomplete and inconsistent” clauses in the regulation which must be immediately amended.

“We have never been consulted on any of these net billing regulations. When we saw that article a couple months ago we called some of the people in the industry and asked if they heard about it and they said no, nobody knows about anything, so we said that’s kinda strange. We reached out to the ministry and told them that we saw the article and inquired about what’s going on. They told us that they can’t share that information, and I said that’s unacceptable,” Hill explained.

He highlighted some of the clauses he believes are unfair.

“When we finally got the regulation and looked through it, there are completely new, much more restrictive clauses. There are now fines that are implemented into this new piece of regulation, up to $2.5 million, and how they are levied, in some instances, we believe are incorrect and unfair,” he argued.

“Clauses 11.1 and 11.2, where the self-generator, which is the net billing applicant, has no control over which meter JPS installs on their system because as a JPS or net billing customer you don’t own the meter, you just pay for the meter even though it’s a charge on your bill. There’s a clause there that says you can be fined for up to $2 million for some issue with the meter, we don’t believe that’s right,” Hill pointed out.

Aside from that, he noted there are some administrative issues the association would have raised if they were given a seat at the table.

“The process to submit an application takes too long, it’s too inefficient. For example, the cashier at the ministry closes at 1:00 pm every day. It takes three to six months and maybe a year for an application to go through,” he lamented.

“There are things, for example, like schedules of costs, like cost for meters, testing, replacing meters, things that we need to talk to the OUR about,” Hill added.

The JREA president expressed concerns that the regulations appear to be one sided and do not give sufficient consideration to ordinary Jamaicans who participate in the net billing programme.

“This is not something that we as a couple of industry players are making a big deal about because we haven’t been consulted, this is not a petty argument. This is something that the public needs to be aware of because it affects how you are able to deploy solar or wind or whatever you choose as an alternative energy source on your house or business going forward.”

With that in mind, he cautioned that if action isn’t taken now it could be another decade or more before industry stakeholders receive any reprieve.

“These legislations don’t change quickly. The last time we reviewed net billing was when the pilot programme started, which was about 12 years ago. They had in the pilot programme that two per cent of the total net energy generation would be dibbed off for the net billing programme and once that two per cent is met then I guess we’ve met the goal for the net billing programme, and we need to decide to either close it or expand it. We’re being told now that has been achieved, which we had no idea about, and the question now is whether the programme is closing, it’s unclear,” said Hill.

“This is a sector that we have been developing probably for the last 15 years without much conversation with the regulatory authorities. It’s been very difficult to work out regulations that we believe are fair. It feels as if they are always one-sided towards utility companies,” he argued.

Hill said the association has already come up with recommendations on how the regulations can be amended but noted that the ministry has put the suggestions on hold indefinitely.

“We wrote a seven-page document, we went through every clause in the new regulation and we said the overarching reason why these need to change and this is what the solutions could be. We took our time and went through all those, then we sent back a letter to the minister from September 2, 2022 and we finally had a meeting with the ministry about three weeks ago when we found out that these regulations have been passed and they’re basically saying we’ll take this into consideration in the future if we make new regulations.”

Hill emphasised that, that response simply won’t do and is calling for immediate amendments to be made.

“We see within this document a complete disregard for the industry players. In 2022, with our development goals to expand renewable energy generation across all areas of our economy, this piece of legislation doesn’t seem to line up with those goals and we need to review these things,” he said.

“We want the Government to meet with us and other stakeholders, review the recommendations that we have, and pass an amendment to that piece of legislation immediately. This has been done in other instances, we see this being done at customs, for example, where they would pass an appendix listing new items that can be added to a classification and so forth. I’m not a Government expert on how they should do it, I just know that we can meet and we can amend legislations. Whatever way it’s to be done. What is currently there on paper is what we believe is incomplete and inconsistent with our gross projections for how net billing should go,” Hill continued.

“We want everyday Jamaicans to be able to continue to participate in net billing and be a significant contributor to the energy goal that we have. It can’t just be that you’re gonna continue to put out big projects and give it to foreign people to build out the project and say, “Hey, we’ve reached our goal’. What about the everyday man?” he stated.