ANNOUNCEMENTS
The grid connected rooftop photovoltaic sector in India had about 3.4 GW of installed capacity as of September 2018. As the government of India has set a target of 40 GW of installed capacity for rooftop solar plants in India by 2022, it becomes imperative to consider the generation obtained from these plants. The rooftop O&M sector in India has not developed as compared to utility sector due to various technical and commercial issues.
With a huge market potential for providing O&M services in India, it becomes necessary to understand what issues affect plant generation the most so that a suitable business case can be built around it. This study looks into some of the factors that affect the performance of rooftop PV plants in India by conducting audits of the plants. The study is in three parts, where the first part involves detailed audits of 10 underperforming rooftop plants in the NCR region of India. The second part involves an individual walk through audit of a plant to apply the learnings from the detailed audits. The third part involves the formulation of business models which could be used by the stakeholders to meet the needs of the O&M sector.
The results from the audits yielded several issues which are common in rooftop PV plants and which are easy to rectify if due diligence is taken by the stakeholders. Based on these results two business models have been suggested which aim to provide easy methods to carry out an O&M intervention for poorly generating plants. A few recommendations are also suggested at the end so as to facilitate the growth of the rooftop PV sector as a whole.
Keywords: Operation & Maintenance, Performance improvement, Rooftop Photovoltaic, Business Model, Site Audit
