Zero feed-in: what it means when the grid will not take your surplus

Clients arriving from European or North American reading often assume a solar system exports what it does not use, and that the meter runs backwards. In Uganda it does not work that way for commercial and industrial users, and that difference shapes how every system gets sized.

No net metering, so no export

There is no net metering arrangement for commercial and industrial connections here. Systems are therefore configured for zero export, which means the inverter actively limits output so that nothing flows back into the utility network. Everything the array produces is consumed on site, or it is not produced at all.

This is also what keeps the utility relationship straightforward. Backfeed is the condition utilities care about, and with export limiting set correctly the system never creates it. Having solar on site is not itself a reason for disconnection.

Why it drives the sizing

If surplus has nowhere to go, then any capacity above the daytime load is curtailed. An array sized 30 percent above what the site consumes in daylight does not produce 30 percent more value. It produces the same value and costs more.

So the sizing question becomes a load question. What does the site actually draw between roughly nine and four, on a working day and on a quiet day, and how much of that is stable enough to design against. This is why we ask for consumption data or install logging before quoting anything above a small system.

Where storage changes the answer

Storage is what converts curtailed surplus back into value, by moving midday production into the evening or into an outage. That makes a battery worth its cost on a site with meaningful evening load or a real reliability problem. On a site whose consumption is purely daytime, the same money usually does more in additional panels.

The approvals side

For grid-tied systems we prepare the applications for the utility and the regulator, set the system for zero export and manage the approval process. It is procedural work rather than difficult work, but it is work, and it belongs with whoever builds the system.