Net metering,and what KSEB actually does.

മീറ്റർ എങ്ങനെ വായിക്കുന്നു

How the meter is read.

Almost everyone assumes export cancels import in the same instant. It does not, and the difference decides what you are billed.

KSEB bills you on what you took from the grid, less what you sent back, less anything left over from last month. Surplus is not paid for; it is banked and carried forward. So a bright February is not lost — it turns up on the next bill as a credit against what you use, rather than as money.

Which is why a system sized far past your own use earns less than it looks like it should: those extra units are never bought from you, and the subsidy stops at ₹78,000 whatever the size. Two separate reasons to size against your bill rather than against your roof.

And above 250 units, the clock starts to matter

If what is left on your bill is still above 250 units a month, KSEB charges you by the time of day you use power — 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. counts as solar hours, 4 p.m. to 9 a.m. does not. Worth knowing before you size anything, because the hours your panels work are not the hours most families use power. A house that cooks, washes and runs air conditioning after six is buying most of its electricity in the window its own roof cannot supply.

That does not make solar a bad idea. It makes when you use power part of the conversation, not just how much. The bill calculator shows which side of 250 you are on today →

ഫിക്സഡ് ചാർജ്

The fixed charge you still pay, and the choice about it.

The choice is real, the arithmetic behind it is not obvious, and most of the market has it backwards.

First, the part people are not told before they buy. Houses with solar pay the fixed charge like everyone else. It was challenged before the regulator in 2025 and the challenge failed. A customer who finds this out after the panels are up feels cheated, so it is said here plainly and before the sale rather than after it. (KSEB calls a household that generates its own power a prosumer; you will see the word on the forms.)

The same order created an option. Instead of the usual fixed charge, which rises and falls with your consumption, you may choose a flat ₹47 per kW a month on the size of your solar system — with at least one month’s written notice to KSEB.

It is usually the worse of the two, and it is routinely sold as the better. The tempting comparison is ₹141 a month for a 3 kW system against the ₹220 to ₹310 a big household pays today. That comparison is wrong: it sets the flat charge against your bill before solar. After solar your billed units collapse — and the usual fixed charge collapses with them, because it steps down through the same bands your units just fell through.

If you take one thing from this page: do not choose the flat charge because somebody called it the solar rate. Ask for both figures against the bill you would have after solar, in writing, and then choose. It is a month’s notice either way, not a life sentence.

നാല് ഘട്ടങ്ങൾ

The four steps, and how long they really take.

Written the way it actually runs in Kerala, including the gate that has nothing to do with your roof.

1. Feasibility — including your transformer

   KSEB checks whether the distribution transformer feeding your street has the capacity to take what you would export. This is a real gate in Kerala and it rejects sites. It is not about your roof, it is not something a better quote fixes, and it is worth checking before you spend anything.

2. Two applications, not one

   A set of annexures — 1, 2 and 3, filed at three different stages of the installation — goes to KSEB, and the subsidy application goes to the national portal. Both, not either. Filing one and assuming it covers the other is the most common way an application stalls quietly for a month.

3. Installation and inspection

   The system goes up and KSEB inspects it before anything is energised against the grid. Commissioning ahead of approval is not a shortcut; it is how a subsidy claim fails.

4. Net meter and agreement

   The net meter goes in and the net metering agreement is signed. The meter is rented, like the ordinary one: ₹30 a month single phase, ₹35 three phase.

Budget 90 to 120 days end to end. That is longer than most states and longer than most national guides admit. Anyone promising four weeks in Kerala has either not done it or is not telling you the truth.

It is also the reason the 31 March 2027 subsidy deadline is closer than it looks: four months of approval means an application started late in 2026 is not comfortable.

One more thing that can cap your system

Your roof is not the only limit. KSEB also looks at the load sanctioned on your connection — the figure on your bill — and the system you are allowed can be capped by it whatever your roof would hold. If you want something large, raise it at the feasibility stage, not after the panels are bought.