It’s time to switch to solar

KOCHI: The mercury is rising! Instead of equipping ourselves with watermelons and air conditioners to stay cool, why not consider going solar this summer? Renewable solar energy is a state-wide focus and India is striving to make solar energy available, accessible and affordable to all.This makes any available rooftop viable for solar energy harvesting! As an added incentive, corporations, municipalities and local urban bodies will provide property tax abatement to domestic building owners who install consumer scale solar energy systems.

In order to understand consumer-scale solar energy, it becomes vital to understand what is popularly called “net metering”. All of us are familiar with our regular electricity meters; in the case of solar power, the existing meter needs to be replaced with one that measures both the energy import (from the grid to the consumer) and energy export (from the consumer to the grid). These meters are known as bidirectional energy meters or import-export energy meters.