Now anyone in the UK with solar PV panels can be paid the same price for surplus electricity they export to the national grid during daylight hours they pay for any conventional electricity imported at night ... Developed in conjunction with Greenpeace, this new scheme breaks with Current practice, and, as Greenpeace put it, ‘ends the electricity “daylight robbery” that left some customers paying three times as much for dirty electricity from fossil fuels as they were paid for the excess clean solar electricity they generated’.

TXU Europe owners of Eastern Energy now hope that electricity customers across the UK will seize this opportunity to switch to their supplies and install solar panels on their roofs. This radical move supported by Greenpeace, underlines the companies commitment to the environment as a responsible energy company.

Greenpeace Executive Director, Peter Melchett said after the announcement, “Solar panels give homeowners a chance to produce clean electricity that doesn’t damage the climate - for this customers should be rewarded not ripped off” Greenpeace began negotiations over solar ‘net metering’ in May 1997 after the organisation mounted 30 solar electric panels on the roofs of three Peabody Trust terraced homes in Silvertown, Docklands.

Overnight it doubled the number of solar homes in Britain and became the first application of solar power on social housing in this country. Now the idea can spread - the Solarnet deal is now on offer to every one else.
Greenpeace is hopeful that the TXU offer will break one barrier to making solar affordable to all. It notes that the cost of solar panels has dropped fivefold over the last 15 years and should plummet once a mass market for solar is established. Studies by global business analysts, KPMG and the oil company BP Amoco, have shown that if just one large solar factory was built in Europe the price of panels will come crashing down making them cost effective.

Certainly, other countries with similar climates to the UK have ambitious programmes to develop solar electric power. Net metering, or even better net metering with a premium, is already law in many US states and in Germany.