India Inc seeks sunshine to save electricity costs

In 2014 Max Bupa Health Insurance installed a 32-kilo watt (kw) rooftop photovoltaic (PV) system on top of its commercial building at Mohan Co-operative Industrial Estate in Badarpur, on the outskirts of Delhi, to earn some carbon credit.

Buoyed by the saving in its electricity bill, the insurance firm put up another 36.5 kw solar PV system on the same premises in 2015.

Today, it generates 68.5 kw solar power and has snipped its monthly electricity expense by around Rs 1 lakh.

"We are saving around Rs 1 lakh per month on our electricity bill. Besides this, we have also earned a lot of carbon credit points over the last two years," said Ajay Gupta, manager – administration and facilities, Max Bupa Health Insurance.

In a similar move, United Nations Children's Emergency Fund's (Unicef) India office in Delhi has successfully commissioned a 55-kilowatt peak (kWp) grid tied solar power plant under net metering scheme.

Net metering allows a consumer to export solar energy from his plant to the grid in the day time when consumption is low and import it later. The consumer gets paid by the power distribution company at the end of a month if his net export of solar electricity exceeds his net import.

Unicef claims it will save Rs 1.4 crore over the next 25 years on account of its rooftop solar power installation and availing to the net metering scheme.

"The saving will start from day one," it said in response to a dna's email.

These green efforts in the solar energy segment undertaken by commercial consumers are picking up pace with increasing government incentives, falling costs and improving paybacks. Kushagra Nandan, president and chief operating officer, SunSource Energy, says the government is going all-out to reduce bottlenecks for creating an efficient ecosystem for solar power in India.

"They (government) have helped create an ecosystem to facilitate even large PSUs (public sector undertakings) like NTPC, Railways and Airports Authority of India (AAI) and others to look at deploying solar for meeting their electricity needs," he said.

Nandan feels a lot of challenge would be in getting the solar energy ball rolling. This, he feels, has begun to some extent with the government enforcing Renewable Portfolio Obligation (RPOs), which up till now had not been pushed aggressively.

He believes RPOs are likely to create huge demand for rooftop solar systems, which will constitute 40% of the 100 gigawatt (gw) solar power capacity that the government is looking to reach by 2022. Nandan expects 20-30% of the solar energy demand emanating from the RPOs.

"The government is pushing RPOs for larger industries like cement manufacturers and others. Today, RPOs are there, but not mandatory. Now, the government is giving teeth to it by saying that if polluting sectors don't buy clean energy, they can be penalised," he said.

Nandan forecast a hockey stick phenomenon to occur in the rooftop solar power over the next two years because of the RPOs.

Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh (MP) are three leading states where large solar projects have been commissioned and which make up for more than 70% of solar projects in India. Today, almost all state governments in India have ratified policies for purchasing power from rooftop solar units.

Gaurav Mathur, CEO of Trina Solar India Pvt Limited, says 2016-17 is going to be a year of rooftop solar energy. He is already seeing traction in that segment of the electricity with US-based retailer Walmart installing these power units on the roofs of all its warehouses across India.

"It makes sense because they (Walmart) have warehouses in remote areas, where there is no electricity," he said.

Meanwhile, the government has already taken a huge stride in this direction with state-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (Seci) inviting bids for 500 megawatt (mw) of rooftop solar power projects across states.
Electricity generated from rooftop plants is being considered commercially more viable because they save transmission cost as they are built at customer's premises.

Mathur says India has to work on becoming more competitive by building an efficient value chain for producing power from the Sun.

"Till the time you do that you will not be as competitive as the Chinese. Made-in-India solar modules are more expensive than Chinese modules. Currently, there is almost 8-10% difference between Indian and Chinese prices, even if we don't compare their quality," he said.