Net metering and its impact on PV program in Tunisia

In the frame of the new economic policy, Tunisia opened its market to the private sector in the energy production sector. Tunisia has now a large government funded PV program aimed to bring electricity to remotes rural houses. The national goal is to make renewable energy cover 3% of the energy consumption by 2010. This paper deals with PV net metering in Tunisia. It simulates the PV energy production depending on the site and on the amount of sunshine using appropriate software and estimates its profitability. We calculate the amount of photovoltaic energy that could be obtained from 17 PV panels with 85 peak watt each. We evaluate the total cost of such system. Our simulation gave a cost of 0.470 TND for the kWh produced from a 1445 Wp PV system connected to the electric company through a DC-AC inverter.