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Technology has matured for lay consumers to tap the sun's energy, say Pritam A. Doshi & Manoj Gursahani

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For several decades solar has been a mirage for India. It has been an ideal solution to solve India's power problems that were caused due to lack of fossil fuel linkages, lack of rural electrification, power theft, etc., except its high cost. However, colossal manufacturing capacity expansions in India and overseas have fueled higher demand; and like any semiconductor technology, the prices have be reducing exponentially and will continue to do so.

With support from the Government, utility-scale solar power plants began mushrooming in the rural landscape in 2011 with solar tariffs in the range of Rs.15 per unit. Very rapidly the prices declined and within the past seven years they have dropped to Rs.2.44 per unit for large utility solar power plants. India therefore has been only of the fastest growing solar markets around the world in the last several years.

Solar has hit grid-parity in India; this is the point where the selling price of solar power from a utility-scale plant is equal or below the price of conventional power purchased by the grid company.

In the last two years, we have seen a surge in solar utility-scale capacity in India where multiple drivers have played an instrumental role such as government policy, land availability, finance, etc. In 2016-17 itself, the capacity added in solar has been equal to that added in the previous seven years, which goes to show the exponential growth in this sector.

If one looks at the players in this sector, the bidding round winners in each successive round have been new players, which goes to show that there is room for more and more, large, well-capitalized players. From a grid stability and power evacuation perspective, there is nothing that technology cannot overcome in terms of the growing contribution of solar power during the day in to the grid as compared to conventional power. However, there is a limit to the availability of suitable, contiguous land parcels, in radiation-abundant regions.

As solar is modular, smaller solar systems that are grid-tied or grid-interactive installed on top of terraces or roofs are also beneficial to the developers and to the grid. The grid-tied solar systems can be of any size and are connected to building electrical loads and are synchronized with the grid. The building uses power from the solar system and excess power requirement is simultaneously, automatically pulled from the grid.

With the advent of smart grid technologies and government policies to support it, net-metering has been introduced by several states in India. A net meter is a meter that records bi-directional electrical flow, both consumption of power from the grid and export of power to the grid. Net metering policies introduced by state governments allow the power consumer to generate their own power using their own solar system installed on their property and feed-in excess power to the grid. This export of power earns a electrical units on the electricity bill which shows as a credit which can be consumed at a later date.

Net-metering allows (i) the power consumer to use the grid as a "virtual battery" thereby eliminating the need for storage batteries, (ii) maximize the space available to install an optimally-sized solar system and (iii) homes and businesses to save money, to monetize its vacant rooftop and to become a decentralized power plant.

Anybody with an empty roof, a car park, an unused piece of land, can be a power producer. As solar power today costs less than commercial or industrial tariff, the investment returns for a rooftop power plant owner today range from 15% per year to 35% per year with income-tax depreciation benefits! And if the business is willing to share these returns and doesn't want to invest upfront, financial investors can own the solar asset and sell power to the business. It's a win-win arrangement; the investor makes a annuity-like return, avails the tax depreciation and the business/power consumer benefits from lower power costs.

In our experience, any commercial or industrial rooftop of a hotel, school, college, office building, IT park, manufacturing facility, railway station, airport, etc. can take advantage of cheaper solar power and lower or eliminate its cost of power. There is virtually no electrical load that solar cannot power and therefore it makes its versatile and ideal to use in several different applications.

The future of renewable energy growth is from decentralized power generation which allows everyone and anyone to be a power producer and solar, as it is modular, makes it an ideal choice for decentralized power generation. Decentralized power generation also offers support to grid stability. As India's electrification goals are met, the grid-tied systems, in urban and rural areas, will be commonplace.

Pritam A. Doshi, Manoj Gursahani

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