PUC to introduce photovoltaic meters |09 September 2013

Plans are under way to provide photovoltaic (PV) meters to homes that produce their own electricity through renewable energy sources.

The Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) along with the Seychelles Energy Commission (Sec) and the Ministry of Environment and Energy met their partners and clients last week to discuss this project.
PV is the process which generates electricity by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity. This helps homes to produce their own electricity and thus reduce dependency on power provided by PUC and cut down on monthly electricity bills.

At the launch of the PV system at Electricity House, Roche Caïman on Friday, PUC’s chief executive Phillip Morin explained that “at the moment, meters currently read only energy being used by the household and it fails to account for the excess energy that is being produced through solar panels and other sources”.

“What we do need is a meter that can see energy flowing towards the installation and simultaneously see energy flowing to the grid. This means that the meter will record the amount of energy being sent to the PUC and that which is being used by the household,” he explained.

Mr Morin said this will mean that PUC will have to buy the excess energy from that household. This implies that if you were paying R1000 rupees for your energy consumption every month and had excess energy flowing towards the grid, you would not have been able to calculate it due to the meter not reading that excess amount and therefore you would have to pay the R1000. But with the new system, if your excess energy being sent to the grid amounted to R400, then it would be deducted from the R1,000 consumed, which means you will only pay PUC R600.

The acting chief executive of the Sec Tony Imaduwa said the commission will be responsible towards the licensing and contractual components of the project and is already working on it. The tariffs for the new system are yet to be finalised, but the Minister for Environment and Energy Rolf Payet has said that those details will be available soon.
A date has not yet been set for the change, but as soon as everything is in place interested clients will be notified.