Fiddling on the roof to brighten solar

On January 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Pradhanmantri Suryodaya Yojana. This aims to instal rooftop solar (RTS) power systems on 1 crore houses. With this announcement, Modi has targeted a key pain point in India’s solar power journey: slow uptake of RTS systems. In 2015, GoI increased its solar power generation target from 22 GW to 100 GW by 2022. India fell short of that target, and one laggard has been RTS power generation. Of the 100 GW, 40 GW was supposed to come from RTS. By the end of 2023, rooftop power generation was 11 GW, and energy generated from residences was about one-fifth of that. Recently, GoI increased central financial assistance for the residential RTS programme.

There are several reasons for public disinterest in RTS: one, lack of consumer awareness about the technology, government subsidies and net-metering (a method by which a bill is lowered by deducting the electricity a consumer’s RTS produces from what she consumes); two, reluctance of discoms to let go of their high-paying commercial users; and, three, initial high costs of setting up RTS.

India experiences clear, sunny weather for 250-300 days a year. So, the potential is massive. A Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) study showed that households can technically deploy more than 640 GW of RTS. About 7-8 lakh households have installed RTS, about 4 GW of solar capacity. PM’s announcement will give the necessary push to the sector. A higher uptake of RTS can help individuals cut their energy bills and meet personal clean-energy goals, states save on electricity subsidies, improve discoms’ financial health and pave the way for greater uptake of RE, a must if the country wants to meet its decarbonisation goals.