Issues Solar Plant-Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh government is in big way promoting solar energy generation and in this endeavor roof top solar energy plants play a big role. Even subsidy by the central government and UP state government is being offered. The PVC solar panels are also easily available at a reasonable rate and installation can done by any vendor including a net metering system to measure what all you have consumed from the grid and how much you have supplied to the grid. Theoretically the bill is supposed to be what one has consumed in excess of what one has supplied to the grid. It looks very simple and straight forward but this is where your problems start.

Even though one have been supplying to the grid he continue to received a bill only for what one has withdrawn from the grid with no adjustment for the energy supplied to the grid. The reason is simple as explained by an electricity board official. The meter readers do not know how to read the net metering system and take the reading in most of the cities of the units you withdrew from the grid on a piece of paper and raise the bill. They do not use automatic readers and where they use they only record the amount withdrawn from the grid except main cities where automatic machine read only what is withdrawn from the grid and do not record what one has supplied. Result is that the consumer looses and the department gains in terms of extra power. Delhi (BSES)raises a bill which shows both these readings and the balance is only charged but unfortunately UP energy has no such method and your bill only shows what you have consumed.

There is a need to train the meter readers and give them automatic readers which will read both the readings and the bill must show both the readings and only balance charged to the consumer. Unless this is implemented people ill shy away from solar installation in UP and those who have already installed will continue to run from pillar to post and suffer losses due to non trained meter readers. Meanwhile till the training is complete what the UPPCL can do is to give a whattsapp number where the consumer can upload both the readings and then based on this the bill is raised on a fixed date as given by the department.