Distribution utility encourages net metering

CEBU, Philippines - The Visayan Electric Company is requesting the public to embrace net metering during a forum yesterday at the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. Plenary Hall.

Sebastian Lacson, VECO chief operations officer, said the basic concept of the net metering is that if the consumption exceeds generation, customers pay for net per kilowatt-hour consumed. However, if the generation exceeds consumption, customers receive credit in their bill for net excess generation, explained Lacson.

He encouraged consumers to adopt the said changes as this is indeed a beneficial one.

“We are happy embracing net metering. So we encouraged the customers to also adopt this practice. This will come out very soon,” Lacson said.

This is also VECO’s way of adapting to the government project regarding feed-in tariffs on the renewable energy use. But this one is quite unique since the different households can put up a solar panel in their respective homes and they can have self-generation of power without using power coming from VECO.

Lacson also revealed that they will be signing a memorandum of agreement with a Belgian distributor of solar panels soon, to actively push for solar panel technology.

Aside from net metering, Lacson also shared that they already piloted the pre-paid metering system, but this is not yet available to the public since they still need to iron out everything.

“We are deploying these (pre-paid meters) but we are still testing it as of the moment. We will make it available soon after we can iron out everything,” Lacson said.

With the prepaid metering system, VECO uses the Standard Transfer Specifications platform, in order to support the prepaid electricity scheme. Lacson said this offers consumers who are budget conscious and also people operating apartments and boarding houses a chance for a cheaper bill.

Aside from the two, they also have smart metering wherein VECO can read meters and disconnect a line remotely. They can also be informed right away if there is an outage.

Lacson is also optimistic that nine months from now, people can see a much more improved Osmeña Boulevard with its P50-million underground cabling system project from the Capitol to Fuente Osmeña as they have transferred overhead power lines to below street level.

As of June 2013, VECO is serving 358,166 customers across 672 square kilometers with 433 megawatts in Metro Cebu.  (FREEMAN)