The connection of the solar photo-voltaic system to the power grid has multiple ways, based on electric utility regulations, and solar system owner installation purpose.
One of these connection ways is the gross metering scheme. In this scheme, the whole electricity generated form the solar photo-voltaic system will go directly to the grid, and not to our home. So, all the harvest will be sent back to the grid on a pre-determined feed in tariff we agreed for with our local electricity supplier.
The gross metering scheme was popular in the past where governments all over the world were the sponsors of high rate of feed in tariff, on that time countries governments goal was to create a high incentive for customers to install solar panels on their homes roofs. But now this scheme has been stopped in most countries, and exchanged be net metering scheme in where you use the electricity generated from your solar system in feeding your home electrical equipment/appliances as apriority and the surplus electricity will go to the grid, so you will be only paid for such amount of exported energy. For all cases, you have to check with your local solar system installer in which scheme will be better for you, is it Net metering or gross metering scheme? And which one is available in our area.
The electricity regulator is in charge of indicating the minimum and max power capacity limit for gross metering solar plant, also he indicates the tariff for electricity sale. The major problem of gross metering is that if you have a roof-top solar plant, you have to pay a considerable amount of money to connect it to the grid, as you will need to put cables and distribution circuit boards from the solar inverter up to gross energy meter.
Regulators had thought that gross metering will be simpler and paying better, but they have discovered afterwards, it is not so simple as they though.
Finally, we can say that gross metering can be considered as a business, and actually no body install a roof-top solar plant to sell power, but they want to use the solar generated electricity for their self-consumption, and the surplus can be sold out.
