03/06/2020
The Government of India has set a target of 40 GW of Solar PV power from Roof top installations by 2022. However the real potential for roof top Solar PV in India is much higher than the 40 GW, data shows that by Mar 2020, only 4.6 GW of roof top Solar PV was put in place. Even within the roof top segment, around 70 % of the growth in installations is obsessed by Commercial, Institutional and Industrial consumers, who are paying for grid electricity at a higher tariff, than the Residential sector. With just 11.5 % of the target been met, it looks very difficult to realize the goal in next 2 years.
This little deployment of Solar PV in the Residential sector is due to significant upfront cost, question of ownership of rooftops, lack of awareness among the people, lengthy and time consuming formalities to get the subsidy and short of interest among the DISCOM officials in providing Net meter connections and the required subsequent bill corrections. Smaller developers can play a vital role in getting the roof top targets in residential sector. Some developers feel that there is no incentive for the smaller players to take off and the government push is towards financing large Solar Parks.
The Solar business models, the CAPEX and the RESCO models, do not address the inherent market challenges that the different stake holders in the roof top Solar market face. We need Solar policies that can drive innovative market mechanisms and a roadmap with clear short, medium and long term policy objectives, and incentivising DISCOMs to encourage accelerated adoption among residential customers. Experts feel that the regulatory uncertainty is slowing the pace of Roof top Solar PV installations in India. According to them DISCOM officials are reluctant to support installation of roof top Solar PV because of the potential loss of revenue to their department.
Unless there is a concentrated effort from all the stake holders, including the Regulators, the Central and Nodal Agencies and the DISCOMs, to develop mechanisms that could tackle these challenges, it would be difficult to achieve the target.