Grid Zero
Book demo

Net metering is being rewritten. What to tell customers now

Two central drafts and a run of state orders all point the same way: net metering gets narrower above 5 kW. What to tell a customer who wants to wait.

GridZero6 min read

Net metering policy changes in India 2026 for rooftop solar EPCs

The economics you put in front of a rooftop customer rest on one assumption: that a unit exported to the grid is worth roughly a unit imported from it.

That assumption is being taken apart. Not by a single order you could read once and file, but by several moves in different places, all pushing the same direction.

What has actually changed, and what is only proposed

Keeping these apart matters, because one governs a job you are quoting today and the other does not govern anything yet.

Proposed at the centre, not in force:

  • The Draft National Electricity Policy 2026, released by the Ministry of Power on 20 January 2026 for public consultation, with comments invited by 19 February 2026. Among its provisions is discouraging net metering beyond 5 kW.
  • The Draft Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Amendment Rules, 2026, issued 12 March 2026 with comments invited by 11 April 2026. It proposes a net metering charge on systems above 5 kW, with smaller residential systems exempt, and mandatory storage for prosumers above 500 kW.

Already in force, in states:

  • Maharashtra. From 1 April 2026, MSEDCL net metering consumers with sanctioned load above 10 kW pay a Grid Support Charge: Rs 1.96 per unit for LT consumers and Rs 1.42 per unit for HT consumers, levied on total solar generation rather than on exported units. The 12 percent banking deduction was removed on the same date. Consumers at 10 kW sanctioned load and below are exempt.
  • Gujarat. GERC released draft DRES Regulations 2026 in May 2026, intended to replace the 2016 net metering regulations. The draft introduces virtual net metering up to 4 MW and mandatory battery storage for consumers with contract demand above 100 kW who install capacity beyond their contracted demand.

Why the Maharashtra order is the one to study

Because it shows the shape of the thing rather than the intention.

Read the Grid Support Charge carefully. It is levied on total generation, not on export. A consumer who self-consumes ninety percent of what they generate still pays it on the full amount. That detail changes the arithmetic far more than the headline rate does, and it is exactly the sort of detail that gets lost when a salesperson repeats a number they heard from a distributor.

For a 15 kW commercial system in MSEDCL territory generating around 21,000 units a year, an LT Grid Support Charge at Rs 1.96 per unit is roughly Rs 41,000 a year set against the savings. On a proposal built before April, that line did not exist at all.

If your quotation template still carries a payback figure computed under the old banking rules, it is now wrong in that state, and a customer who checks will find out before you do.

What about grandfathering?

You will hear that existing consumers are protected, and historically that has usually been how these transitions were handled.

Be careful with it anyway. None of the drafts above gives you a grandfathering guarantee in language you could show a customer, and a promise you cannot source is a promise you should not make. There is a difference between telling a customer that connecting sooner has generally been safer than connecting later, which is fair, and telling them their tariff is locked for twenty five years, which you do not know.

The honest position is also the more persuasive one, because it survives the customer checking it themselves.

What to tell a customer who wants to wait six months

Not that the subsidy is about to vanish. It is not, and every EPC who has cried wolf on that has spent credibility they needed later.

Tell them this instead. The rules governing what an exported unit is worth are under active revision at the centre and have already been changed in at least one large state, in every case in the direction of paying the prosumer less. Nothing has moved the other way. A connection energised under today's rules sits under today's rules for as long as those rules survive. A connection energised in eighteen months sits under whatever replaces them.

That is a true statement, it is checkable, and it does more work than urgency you have to manufacture.

What this does to how you size a system

Here is the part most policy coverage skips.

When exported units are worth less than imported units, the optimisation problem changes. The old approach filled the available roof and let the meter sort it out. The new one sizes generation against the consumption curve, because a unit the customer self-consumes is worth the retail tariff while a unit they export is worth whatever the current mechanism says, minus whatever charge is attached to it.

That has three consequences for design:

  • Load data stops being optional. A twelve month bill history becomes an input to sizing, not background reading.
  • Orientation choices change. Splitting an array across two faces to widen the generation curve can beat maximising annual yield on a single face, if the extra output lands when the customer is actually drawing.
  • Storage enters the conversation earlier, and in Gujarat, and above 500 kW at the centre, it may enter it as a requirement rather than an option.

None of that can be done properly on a per kW rule of thumb. It needs a model of the real roof and the real load, which is the argument for keeping designs in something you can re-run when a rule moves rather than in a drawing someone made by hand.

If the module on that design also has to change, the ALMM List-II rules are the other thing currently moving under signed projects.

The short version

  • Two central drafts, both from 2026, both point at narrowing net metering above 5 kW. Neither is in force.
  • Maharashtra already charges Rs 1.96 per unit LT and Rs 1.42 per unit HT above 10 kW sanctioned load, on total generation, since 1 April 2026.
  • The Gujarat draft DRES Regulations 2026 would replace the 2016 regime and mandate storage for some consumers above 100 kW contract demand.
  • Do not promise grandfathering. Say that the direction of travel is one way and let the customer draw the conclusion.
  • Sizing against the load curve, rather than against the roof, is the design response.

Sources

ShareXLinkedInWhatsApp

Keep reading