Exclusive | Rooftop Solar – a big opportunity for MSMEs in Bengal

West Bengal government may soon introduce roof top solar power system, especially for high rise buildings. This in turn is expected to through up huge opportunities for the small and mid-sized solar companies, panel makers.  That’s not all. Moves are afoot to offer a subsidy/incentive of 20 per cent to users of solar power. In districts, the state government is planning to use solar power in all government buildings soon.

Subhas Bose, Founder-Director, Green World Corporation, a solar company in the SME segment, said, “With the capital subsidy and generation based incentive, it may be possible to generate power between Rs 5 – 10 per unit as applicable for the different financial models for the next 25 years,  which is cheaper than the diesel gen-set based electricity and this could also be cheaper than the cost at which most DISCOMS would make power available to the same consumer.”

Ashden India Renewable Energy Collective (AIREC), which had been assigned under a DFID-KMC project to prepare the policy guidelines for grid connected rooftop solar scheme for Kolkata including Salt Lake and Newtown Kolkata (Rajarhat), has already submitted its report in this regard.

S P Gon Chaudhuri, Solar Scientist and Chairman, Ashden India Collective, said, “The maximum demand under CESC, (RP Sanjiv Goenka group-owned power utility, which supplies power in and around Kolkata), reached 2000 MW in 2014, wherein the PLF was 80 per cent. Solar rooftop installation can provide a significant amount of energy for in-house load and can reduce peak energy demand in urban establishments during daytime. Depending on the rooftop area available, it would be possible to optimally utilize the available solar energy resource in the city. Installing rooftop PV in rural areas is cheaper than building a central power plant and grid, and electricity from PV is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. India is slowly building upon its installed Solar power capacity, thanks to the comprehensive and ambitious National Solar Mission, state Solarpolicies, and relatively increased enforcement of the Renewable Purchase Obligation.”

Kolkata has a few rooftop solar power generating units installed on institutional and government buildings. At this moment, the total RTSPV capacity in West Bengal stands at about 1 MW (including private installations). However, performance of these are not encouraging mainly because of lack of awareness and poor O&M action. Now the plan is to generate additional 100 MW of power from solar rooftop by 2017 and 500 MW additional power by 2022.

Ashden India study suggests that the rooftop are available in KMC area and its satellite townships ( KMC– 185.0 sq km, New Town-35 sq km, Salt Lake-12.5 sq km) is huge– in the tune of 232.5 sq km, which can be brought under the purview of the rooftop solar policy.

“Any person, which shall include any company or body corporate or association or body of individuals, whether incorporated or not, shall be eligible to set up rooftop solar photo voltaic power plant & approach nodal agency & DISCOMs for implementation of such power plants provided such plants comply with the technical standards and specifications, if any, specified by the Central/State Government or through its nominated agency,” mentioned the Ashden study.

Rooftop solar photo voltaic power plants are proposed to be promoted under Net Energy Metering Mechanism and it will be implemented utilizing at least 70 per cent of the available rooftop area. Funds from the state government may be made available for implementation of grid connected RSPVPP. While the Installed capacity in a premise should not be less than 2 KW, the maximum capacity, as suggested by Ashden would be 100 KW per project/system.