Sunlight Into Savings: How Electricity Export & Credits Work in NEM Rakyat

Pull back the curtains in Malaysia’s energy circus and you’ll spot nem rakyat as the star of the rooftop solar show. Everyone dreams of shrinking their TNB bill, but the burning question is: How does the system actually handle all this energy coming and going?

Picture a regular day. Your solar panels guzzle sunlight and produce electricity while you’re away, probably at work or grabbing kopi at the mamak. Since you’re not running your microwave or blasting air-cond, there’s more solar power produced than you actually use. What then? That surplus doesn’t just vanish into thin air. Instead, it’s pinged—almost seamlessly—back into the grid. Think of it as sending your left-over lemang to a friend next door, who, by the way, happens to be every other TNB customer.

How does TNB know how much you’re sharing and how much you’re using? Easy: a smart meter. Installed as part of the NEM Rakyat package, it acts like an eagle-eyed referee, keeping score for both import (what you draw from the grid) and export (what you feed back).

Now for the magic: every exported kilowatt-hour gets you a credit at the EXACT rate you’d pay TNB for that same power. Not half, not market price, but a full-on ringgit-for-ringgit match. Let’s say you export 100 kWh in July. That stacks up as credits. When your evening Netflix binge, fridge, or iron tip the scale, those credits take a juicy bite out of your next bill.

You don’t have to call or fill out extra paperwork—TNB’s billing system does the math automatically each month. Your energy bill will show what you’ve consumed, what you’ve exported, and how your credits are dancing along. It feels almost like playing Monopoly, watching those credits gobble up your charges.

But there’s a catch: these credits aren’t eternal. Use them within 12 months or, like soggy kuih lapis, they expire. That’s plenty of time for most households to capitalize on sunny months and ride through cloudier, rain-soaked periods.

Joining NEM Rakyat also means regular reports and checks from your solar provider. The process is simple, but checking your inverter’s digital readout once in a while keeps things honest.

All said, NEM Rakyat’s export and credit system is the true kingmaker. Energy you don’t use transforms into hard-earned cash saved, month after month. In a country where sunshine is almost a given, that’s as close to printing money as Malaysians can get—minus the risk of Bank Negara knocking at your door.