Finally completed all the paperwork and got the net meter installed by Bescom for a 3KWp PV system.

• The initial application is easy to fill out online at this site. Though like many other public services in India there's this bad habit of exposing an ever-changing IP address while rolling out new services. I'm not sure who their IT vendor is but needs to be taken to task for exposing the IP address rather than a constant URL. More on their IT vendor later in this post.

• Visit the local sub-division to pay the registration fee to kick off the application process. This is not a painful process if you're used to standing in queues to do simple tasks. At the Green Summit in 2015 Bescom MD Shri Pandey said this payment could be shortly made online. This still hasn't happened. Management always under-estimates the amount of work required even for seeminly simple changes.

• Fill out Format 5 with details of the equipment to be used.

• It's wise to purchase the net meter early (well before planned installation) because (in 2015) there was a long lead time for delivery of the net meter. The process for testing the net meter has been changed to put the responsibility of testing on the meter vendor. In 2015, the purchased net meter had to be taken to the Bescom meter testing (MT) lab in Gavipuram by the installer for a certificate before installation.

• Once the entire installation is complete, the sub-division AEE (Assistant Executive Engineer) will provide you with the contact details of the MTEE (Meter Testing Executive Engineer) with whom the installer must liaise to install the net meter as that involves removing the existing meter which is Bescom property. Once the work is done or is on-going, some MTEEs will invite you to the back seat of their car to inspect your paperwork. While this may seem a little odd to most people, it's almost surely an indication that they expect to be paid a bribe for their signature on the paperwork. Most of us would much rather be consummating other types of deals in the back seat of a vehicle, but that p/reference will be lost on most Bescom MTEEs.

• Getting Bescom to make regular payments based on correct meter readings is like another visit to the dentist. The billing of the accounts with net meters is manual because Bescom has a conflict with their IT vendor (Infosys I think) which has lead to a delay in automated billing for the net metering scheme. Even so, billing is the smoothest operation in the entire process. The pain points lie elsewhere. Most Bescom meter readers are to begin with ignorant about how to read the net meter. Expect errors in the first couple of meter readings which translate to errors in the first couple of bills, which is not the fault of the billing department. Once the meter is correctly read and the bill is correctly generated, the responsibility for payment of the bill lies with another department - Accounts. If you ever suspected that the Accounts department of any organization seemed like the least professional part, your suspicion will be confirmed by Bescom's Accounts department. Getting a payment from this department is like trying to thread a needle while on a KSRTC bus on a dusty pothole ridden road - you think you've got the right person who has the authority to release the payment and then the bus hits the pothole and you're transferred to the next person to try and start all over again.

• In 2016 there was a hiccup in the scheme as some AEE/EE's were discovered to have been taking bribes to sign off on installs which didn't meet the criteria of the roof-top net metering scheme. In addition there was first a reduction in the net-metering tariff and then there was a flip-flop of cancelling net-metering in favour of gross-metering and then allowing net-metering for residential installations. More confusion, more delays created to benefit those who are willing to ignore process and get their work done using bribes. Classic white-collar guerilla warfare techniques of bogging the well intentioned down in mediocrity.