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If your house or farm has a way to generate its own electricity, such as solar cells or a wind turbine, then it goes without saying that you don't pay anything for the energy that you generate yourself. But what about those times when you generate more energy than you actually need? It's pretty hard to schedule your peak demand periods for times when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. If you don't use that energy, then it goes back into the power grid, where it can be used by someone else. Before net metering, you could keep track that electricity with a separate meter and, if you were lucky, the power company might compensate you for it at wholesale price. With net metering enabled, that excess electricity causes your regular power meter to run in reverse. This enables you to "bank" that electricity against power you draw from the utility at other times. Since you pay for only the "net" amount of power that you draw, you end up receiving the full retail value of all the electricity you generate yourself, regardless of whether you actually used it. Because net metering is regulated at the state level, the rules for how it works vary from state to state. The Department of Energy has the latest information available. In most states, utilities have argued for and gotten a cap on exactly how much power can be net metered - but there's still plenty of room for ordinary consumers to save money and generate more of their electricity in environmentally sustainable ways. Up to Top |
Net metering might sound like a way to keep track of how much time the kids are spending in AOL chat rooms, but it's actually an innovative way to encourage alternative energy use at the residential and small-business level. If your state is one of the 30 or so that currently allows net metering, then your electric meter can operate both forwards and backwards - and that can mean significant long-term savings on electricity.