Solar rooftop: from megawatts to Gigawatts
Student name: Ms Devina Anand
Guide: Dr Kaushik Ranjan Bandyopadhyay
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: KPMG, Gurgaon
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Harsh Kanani
Abstract: While the JNNSM opened up the solar electricity sector in India, the focus has primarily been on large-scale grid-connected power plants. With the drastic fall in prices of PV modules and the high and rising tariffs of certain consumers in India, grid-connected solar Rooftop PV systems are becoming increasingly viable economically. Rooftop PV systems can offer benefits in terms of providing peaking supply of power, reducing T&D losses, improving tail end voltages, and creating local jobs.
India’s objective of attaining 40 GW of solar rooftop capacity still seems remote unless the shortfalls are mitigated. This paper focuses on the solar rooftop experience of India and other countries and at the same time gives us an insight into the major hurdles in the implementation of this mechanism. Chapter 1 throws light on the movement of solar market historically as well as the present picture. We also get to see the factors that have been driving the growth of rooftop solar globally. In the following chapter, I have talked about the reasons why Rooftop solar is being given importance and the reasons there is a need to adopt the mechanism.
Chapter 3 gives us an insight into the Rooftop experience of United States and Germany, which have been major contributors in the development and implementation of Rooftop concept. We get to see how rooftop market has moved in the above mentioned countries and also the incentives that might be provided. The next chapter shows the regulatory and policy framework of Rooftop in India, where I have discussed the net metering regulation of a few states that have come up with their policies, based on certain parameters.
Chapter 5 and chapter 6 form the major crux of this report. The former section focuses on important issues and bottlenecks in the implementation of solar rooftop. The issues identified were financing, resistance from discoms, project delays, engaging customers and lack of sustainable business models. Out of the mentioned hurdles, the most important has been the resistance that is being faced from distribution companies, the reason being their fall in revenues since most of the consumers move towards to rooftop instead of buying energy from DISCOMS. Thus there has been lack of support on their part.
Chapter 6 shows us the major benefits and advantages of implementing a rooftop framework. Here, I have talked about the load management, where adoption of rooftop will help handle peak demand and also enable a reliable supply of electricity. I have also mentioned about the reduction in distribution losses which may result from the lack of T&D losses and infrastructure costs. Other benefits mentioned are Modularity and lower dependence on fossils.
The last section throws light on the major stakeholders, their areas of consideration and the impact od rooftop on them. The stakeholders covered here are the rooftop owners, developers and financiers and distribution utility. Towards the end, the report mentions how their problems can be mitigated and provides a way forward to promote Rooftop solar.
We believe that a net-metering approach to rooftop promotion is ideally suited for India, since it is socially equitable (high energy using consumers pay for solar thus preventing the incremental costs of solar electricity generation from being passed on to everyone), economically viable (avoided consumer tariffs are at par with solar PV), and environmentally sustainable (through the use of solar PV, a renewable resource in the grid-connected mode, thus avoiding the use of batteries).
