Rooftop solar quota for households under net energy metering fully subscribed again

• An initial quota of 150MW for NEM Rakyat was fully taken up in November 2023, alongside the initial 800MW for commercial and industrial segment dubbed NEM Nova.

KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 17): The 350-megawatt (MW) quota for rooftop solar allocated under the Net Energy Metering (NEM) Rakyat initiative for households has been fully subscribed, according to data from Sustainable Energy Development Authority (Seda).

Of this total, 306.07MW, or 87.45%, has been approved for projects, the data showed.

NEM Rakyat, which runs from 2021 to 2024, is part of the broader NEM 3.0 programme, aimed at encouraging residential consumers to adopt solar photovoltaic (PV) systems through government incentives.

An initial quota of 150MW for NEM Rakyat was fully taken up in November 2023, alongside the initial 800MW for commercial and industrial segment dubbed NEM Nova.

Since then, the NEM Rakyat programme has been provided additional quota twice — once in January 2024 totalling 100MW, (effective February) followed by another 100MW in April. The government also added 300MW to NEM Nova, lifting the quota to 1,100MW then.

An uptick in the take-up among households is partly attributed to a rebate programme dubbed Solar for Rakyat Incentive Scheme (SolaRIS) announced in April, which offers a rebate of RM1,000 per kilowatt alternating current (kWac), up to a maximum of RM4,000, on a "first come, first served" basis.

This comes at a time when Malaysia is leaning towards higher electricity tariffs, beginning with commercial and industrial users, as regulators seek to allow domestic tariffs to catch up with international tariffs amid rising energy costs.

In Peninsular Malaysia, gas, which makes up 40% of power generation mix, is sold to the power sector at a discount, contributing to electricity tariffs that are cheap regionally but unsustainable when gas prices are high.

NEM 3.0 enables electricity consumers to generate their own solar power and offset it against their electricity bills.

Under the scheme, domestic users who install solar PV systems on their rooftops use the energy produced first, with any excess energy exported back to the Tenaga Nasional Bhd (KL:TENAGA) grid.

Meanwhile for the second category, the NEM GoMEn programme, which caters to government buildings, there is still 45.68MW remaining from the total 100MW quota, with 46.91MW, or 86.36%, already approved.

For the third category, under the NEM Nova scheme, which targets commercial and industrial users, 110.55MW remains available out of the 1,100MWac total allocation, with 919.60MW, or 92.94%, approved.

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