As you heard, part of that Least-Cost of Power Study is exploring the possibility in which consumers can become a supplier to the national grid by installing solar panels on your home's rooftop.
Here's how the members of the BEL head table explained the proposed logistics and the potential benefits:
Sean Fuller - GM, Commercial and Retail Services, BEL
"The way how we are proposing to roll out, first of all we've submitted to the PUC draft legislations to allow for distributed generation, solar PV, that is both interconnection standards to ensure that these systems are install properly and interconnected to a network safely and also 2 tariffs; tariffs for distributed generation and a feeding tariff that allows BEL to be able to purchase excess power from these producers, the independent producers households, because they will have solar systems on their roofs that may have excess energy produced that they want to feed back into the BEL grid. We want to be able to compensate customers for the energy they export back to the grid, but we are also contemplating providing, in fact we've done the studies, we've done the development of customer prepositions to be able to offer our customers solar PV systems where we will own and operate the solar on your roof. You will have zero out of pocket. we will install the solar on your roof, you will enjoy the benefit of green energy, you will enjoy the benefit of the cheaper sources or the cheaper energy from that solar PV system, you will remain our customer and so there will not be a revenue loss. It will just simply mean that the sources of energy that we have to purchase to supply will also come from you. You will supply yourself and also the excess that you may have supplied from your system will also be able to feed back into the grid and we will be able to compensate you for that energy on some price set by the PUC."
Karique Marin - Manager, Distribution Planning & Engineering, BEL
"Currently, we are planning for 10megawatts of distributed generation. meaning customers across the country can interconnect with 10 megawatts. However, that is not a fixed number. It's a balance between the total solar penetration across the country connected to the grid, so its a balance between the utility scale 30-60 megawatts that Shawn mentioned earlier and the amount of distributed generations across the country from customers. Right now, at this current time we are projecting 10 megawatts. However, that is subject to change depending on if we do meet our limitation as it relates to the utility scale first or we meet the limitation as it relates to the distribution network first."
