Chandigarh: Chandigarh is the only city where solar rooftops have been installed on all government buildings, informed UT home secretary Anurag Agarwal on Tuesday.
Sharing the progress made by Chandigarh in promotion of solar power, at a conference organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Agarwal said Chandigarh achieved 14.3 MW of solar-power generation through rooftops. UT administrator V P Singh Badnore recently inaugurated a 2MW solar power plant at the Sector 39 waterworks. The administration is targetting generation of 50 MW power through rooftop solar plants by 2019-2020. “We are going to install a 25MW rooftop solar plant over Patiala Ki Rao,” said Agarwal.
He said the administration had made the process of availing subsidies to install solar rooftop plants easy, with the launch of a website — solarchandigarh.com — where anyone can apply. “As per amended building bylaws, Chandigarh made it mandatory to have solar rooftops for buildings with area of 500 sq yards or more,” he said.
Badnore said that during his stint with the parliamentary standing committee on solar power, they had proposed that 5% power generation from renewable sources should be made mandatory. “I am glad it has reached 16%-17% today, and is going up with each passing day,” he said. “Cold deserts such as Leh and Ladakh region are best-suited to produce solar power through rooftops, as the region does not have the problem of dust and pollution as the deserts of Rajasthan. This can support the entire economy of not only Leh and Ladakh, but even Jammu and Kashmir. I would request CII to take up the matter to implement a scheme in this regard with the respective state government,” he said.
The chairperson for Haryana Renewable Energy Development Agency (HAREDA), Shailendra Shukla, said the Haryana government was targeting 4,200 MW of solar power generation by 2022, including 1,600 MW from rooftop solar power plants. The principal secretary of non-conventional energy in Punjab government, Anirudh Tewari, said they had been taking valuable policy inputs from CII. “I am sure views emanating from today’s deliberations will set the pace for a solar rooftop revolution in Punjab,” he said.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes
