India and Australia may soon cooperate in roof top solar, which is gaining ground with several states putting in place regulation for net metering, an arrangement that gives credit for solar power generation.

Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal met his Australian counterpart Mark Bailey on February 9 and this issue figured prominently during the discussions. Queensland Province Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was also present at the meeting. Queensland is known for rooftop penetration in Australia.

Three out of ten houses in Queensland have solar rooftops and Australia can help expand rooftop solar penetration in India, Bailey said.

Many rooftop solar erection companies have come up in the SME sector. There are several SME service providers for setting up of grid solar power plants.

With solar power achieving grid parity with thermal power in the country, the government was taking several steps to push this renewable energy. The government has set a target of one lakh Mw of solar power generation by 2022, of which 40,000 Mw is to be generated through rooftop solar.

Today it is possible to generate solar power from the solar rooftop systems at about Rs.6.50/kWh. This is cheaper than the diesel gen-sets based electricity generation. The largest US solar power company has quoted as low as 4.63/kWh from a project in India.

Twenty-six States have notified their regulations to provide Net Metering/Gross metering facilities to support solar rooftops installations.

Goyal highlighted the role of energy security in some of the key initiatives of the Prime Minister namely Make in India, Digital India and Skill India. He further said that Australia could help India with better technology and leapfrogging the learning curve.

Bailey stressed the need to increase training collaboration through focused initiatives like ‘Train the Trainer’. India is looking to have better, smarter, safer and more tech savvy systems which are affordable. He also emphasized the need to focus on outcomes during any collaboration.