New net metering contracts will be for five years.

ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to contain contract validity period for net metering consumer for five years and time to time revision on buyback rates, well informed sources told Newzshewz.
Power Division which is under criticism from the net metering consumers across the country for approval of revision in net metering buyback rates from Rs 27 to Rs 10 per unit, has dispatched policy guidelines to the power sector Regulator.
According to sources, NEPRA has been directed to revise buyback rate from the National Average Power Purchase Price to Rs 10 per unit. Provided further, NEPRA may revise the buyback rate from time to time accordingly.
The settlement mechanism shall be updated in such a way that imported and exported units shall be treated separately for the purpose of billing. The exported units shall be bought at the approved buy-back rate and the imported units shall be billed at the applicable peak/off-peak rate during the monthly billing cycle.
Provided further, for any monthly billing cycle, in case the total amount of bill against the units exported by the net metering consumer exceeds the total amount of bill against the units imported from Distribution Company, the net amount shall be credited to the consumer in the subsequent billing cycle(s) and there shall be no provision for the consumer to redeem / cash out the credited amount at any point of time.
NEPRA shall provide for the percentage/cap of hosting capacity on each distribution transformers and feeders in accordance with the comprehensive study to be conducted by each Distribution Company within six months from approval of these guidelines.
NEPRA shall ensure the incorporation., of updated inverter standards under the legal and regulatory framework, requiring all new net metering consumers to comply. The updated standards compliant inverters shall facilitate real-time grid interaction, including voltage and frequency regulation, incorporate anti islanding protection to prevent back-feeding during outages, enable remote monitoring and control by the Distribution Company and support communication interfaces such as Wi-Fi, GSM, Or IoT-based monitoring systems.
The capacity of proposed Distributed Generation (DG) facility shall not exceed the sanctioned load of the consumer’s premises. In case ‘the actual MDI of export units exceeds more than 10% of sanction load, all exported units shall not be adjusted/credited to the consumer bill for the respective billing month as penalty.
Contract validity period for net metering consumers under the revised regulatory framework, shall be limited to five years. Ends