Renew On Line (UK) 26

Extracts from the May-June 2000 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

3. Net Loss

During the committee stages of the parliamentary debate over the Utility Bill, there was an attempt by the Liberal Democrats and by Brian White, Labour MP for Milton Keynes NE, to introduce separate but basically similar amendments designed to allow for 'net metering' - so that electricity consumers who can generate power themselves (e.g from a photovoltiac solar unit on their roof) could get reasonable payment for selling it to the grid. This would also help micro-CHP and maybe also small wind projects. At present small decentralised 'locally embedded' generators like this may only get as little as 2p/kWh for any excess power they produce, while they have to pay up to 7p/kWh for power bought in. The idea is that there should be a standard charge for the net energy flow- either in or out.

Sadly however, despite strong support from across all parties, including from Ian Bruce (Conservative, S. Dorset), the amendment was lost after the Minister, Dr Kim Howells, spoke against it. It seems that the government were worried about providing what it saw as a subsidy. ‘Net metering would create a cross-subsidy from electricity consumers in general to electricity consumers who have some generation capacity for their own purposes, on a domestic or a commercial scale, and who at certain times generate more electricity than they can consume themselves. It would be a cross-subsidy because it would require suppliers to pay more for the electricity thus generated than it is worth to them’.

Instead, he insisted that ‘we want to create a level playing field, and the Bill does that. It separates supply and distribution, places a duty on distributors to facilitate competition in generation and develop and maintain an efficient, co-ordinated and economical system of distribution, and places a duty on the authority to promote consumer interest by promoting effective competition. That is the right statutory framework for embedded generation.’

He added 'it is simply not sensible to try to distort those important general duties on distributors by the addition of a particular item, according to the whim of a particular interest group.’

It seems that he saw the amendment as mainly providing a subsidy for PV solar, a technology that is evidently not as favoured by the Minister as Combined Heat and Power. Certainly he was not having any of Greenpeace’s rhetoric: ‘A 50,000-roof programme with a 50 per cent. subsidy, as suggested by Greenpeace and others, would cost taxpayers around £250 million and generate less than one half of one tenth of 1 per cent. of the United Kingdom's current electricity demand. Is that something on which we should be spending £250 million?’ Not that this was what was being proposed in the amendment...

But even with CHP, there seemed to be room for confusion- the amendment was geared to micro CHP as well as PV, whereas the Minister seemed to be thinking of industrial scale CHP. The main proposer, Norman Baker (Lewes, Lib Dem) argued that : ‘the amendment would give a big boost to solar power and it would encourage small-scale renewable energy generation. It would also be applicable to micro-CHP combined heat and power strategies when domestic-scale systems come on the market’

However, after the Minister assured Brian White that the net metering issue would be explored by OFGEM, he withdrew his amendment, and the Lib Dem amendment was lost, by 7 votes to 10, with White voting against it - later on though he did push through an amendment on CHP.

For the full debate see : http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmstand/a/st000314/pm/00314s06.htm