‘Net Metering’ is sometimes seen in the news in the context of promoting

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Correct — C, a billing mechanism for solar energy by consumers for the electricity they add to the grid. Net metering is an electricity-billing arrangement, not a device and not a fuel. A household or institution that installs a rooftop solar photovoltaic system becomes a prosumer — a consumer who also produces — and is connected to the distribution network through a bidirectional meter that counts two flows separately: units drawn from the grid and units pushed back into it. The bill is raised on the net of the two. If a household imports 400 units in a month and exports 250, it pays for 150; if it exports more than it imports, the surplus is not lost but banked as energy credit and carried into later billing cycles, to be settled at the end of the settlement period on terms fixed by the State electricity regulator. The effect is that the grid works as a free storage battery. That matters because solar generation peaks around midday while a home's demand peaks after sunset, so without either batteries or an export arrangement much of the generation would simply be wasted. Net metering removes the need for costly battery storage and values the exported unit at the retail tariff the consumer would otherwise have paid — which is precisely why it made rooftop solar financially attractive to Indian households and why it is the mechanism named whenever rooftop solar policy is in the news. Two operational details are worth carrying. First, banking is not indefinite: unadjusted credits left at the close of the settlement year are bought out at a rate the regulator prescribes — commonly a wholesale-style rate rather than the retail tariff — so a household that grossly oversizes its system is paid less for the excess than it saved on the units it displaced. Second, the arrangement is a right against the distribution licensee rather than a favour: the consumer applies for grid connectivity, the licensee sanctions capacity within the ceiling the regulator has set, and the bidirectional meter is installed and sealed like any other billing meter.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) A CNG kit is a piece of automotive hardware — a cylinder, regulator and injection system retro-fitted so a petrol engine can run on compressed natural gas. It is promoted through excise and registration concessions and through the spread of CNG stations, not through any metering arrangement. Nothing here involves a consumer feeding a commodity back into a network, which is the whole point of a 'net' measurement.  (b) This is the most tempting wrong option because it is the only other one with a meter in it, and metering urban water supply is a genuine policy debate under urban-reform programmes. But a domestic water meter records a single, one-way flow into the house. There is no export of water from a household back into the municipal main, so there is nothing to net off, and the arrangement would be plain metering rather than net metering.  (d) Piped natural gas is supplied to kitchens through city gas distribution networks awarded by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board, and is measured by an ordinary one-way gas meter. Like the CNG option it is a fuel-substitution policy, promoted by expanding the pipeline network rather than by changing how a bill is computed, and again the household is only a receiver, never a supplier.

Concept: Electricity distribution was designed to move power in one direction, from the grid to the consumer, and the meter existed only to count what arrived. Rooftop solar breaks that assumption: the same premises now generate power, and generation and consumption rarely coincide in time. Three billing designs answer that problem and they must be kept apart. Under net metering, import and export are measured separately and the consumer is billed on the difference, with surplus banked as units. Under gross metering, the entire solar output is exported to the distribution company at a fixed feed-in tariff, while the household separately buys everything it consumes at the ordinary retail tariff — two independent transactions rather than one netted bill. Under net billing, or net feed-in, export is credited in money at a rate lower than the retail tariff, which sits between the other two. Net metering is the most generous of the three to the consumer, because an exported unit is implicitly valued at the full retail tariff, and it is correspondingly the least attractive to distribution companies, which lose sales volume to their best-paying consumers while still having to maintain the wires that make the arrangement possible. That tension is why the rules are contested and why they differ from State to State: net-metering regulations, including the capacity ceiling and the settlement terms, are made by each State Electricity Regulatory Commission under the Electricity Act, 2003.

State PCS 2023 Q39 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q39 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer