Solar power in Gujarat, a state of India, is a fast developing industry given that the large state is mostly arid. It was one of the first states to develop solar generation capacity in India.
As climate change and sustainable development concerns grow globally, renewable energy is the new future. According to India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, it aims to achieve 40 per cent of its total installed energy capacity by 2030 through non-fossil fuel sources. This ambitious goal led to the initial Renewable Energy (RE) targets of 175 GW by 2022 (now revised to 227 GW), of which solar energy will contribute 100 GW. Widely used Solar PV technologies in India, can be categorized as ground-mounted and rooftop utilities. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has launched several schemes for intensifying capacity development of Solar technologies since 2016. Realizing the potential of solar PV rooftops, Gujarat state has launched specific schemes to promote uptake of solar rooftops among residential consumers. The Gujarat Solar Policy 2021 and Surya Urja Rooftop Yojana – Gujarat (SURYA- Gujarat) schemes offer financial and technical assistance to residential users of rooftop systems.
A revolution in clean power is underway, and Sungrow is happy to play a role. A partnership between Sungrow and Indian power giants has produced several gigawatts of power over the last decade. In terms of string inverters, they are the world’s first supplier to offer the world’s largest rating. The company launched its state of the art 10 GW manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, achieving over 12 GW of shipments in India.est manufacturing base in the Indian Solar sector, this new factory in Bangalore is bringing the concept of VOCAL FOR LOCAL products with cutting edge technology. Almost $16 million has been invested by Sungrow in India, which shows their commitment to the country and the sector.
Bankable Inverters from Sungrow
Moderator Mr. Kunj Shah, CMD – ZODIAC ENERGY LIMITED invited Shri M prasanna kumar, managing director – gujarat state electricity corporation limited for he keynote address.
“India is blessed with the natural resources of solar power. Gujarat is blessed even more to have 6-7 KWH per sq m which is very suitable for implementing solar power projects. We are targeting around 300 GW by 2030 for the whole country. After a pandemic situation for almost 2 years, Now the situation is very much encouraging for all the stakeholders in the solar sector. The development in technology, increasing the capacity of the modules. The determination of the government to reach the target of 300 GW at the earliest. One more factor giving encouragement to the solar sector is that, as India is having a CCS index of only 21%. So, going forward this will become a major column. Because we are committed at many conferences to reduce our carbon footprints to a great extent. Apart from that now the hydrogen economy is gradually picking up. Not just solar but once we are through with green hydrogen generation. Solar power can be used in almost all activities of human kind.
Even after heavily investing in the solar sector if we don’t maintain the solar power plants properly our entire calculation goes haywire. The solar plants that are already installed, we need to focus on the operation and maintenance of these solar plants to ensure that the assumptions we make during bidding investment become realisting estimates. The technology can be used effectively for analyzing and identifying the difference.”
As you rightly said, operation and maintenance play a great role in solar power plants.Unfortunately in the private sector neither customer nor EPC player are very aware or serious about the operation and maintenance part of it and they never consider the cost of operation or or maintenance into account while finalizing the order and later on customer and EPC both face the problem.
Gujarat’s solar story is very well known, currently there are some hiccups like residential rooftop projects are just starting and there are some pricing issues. Structure related clarification issues are there. Land is also creating problems.
Mr. Jatin Sharma Manager – Channel Sales – SUNGROW had a great presentation.
Sungrow is always focused on equipment and system solutions. Sungrow is into energy conservation technology and now we are also investing in green hydrogen energy storage, converter systems, and wind energy converters.
They have a product line for new energy, new electric vehicle driving systems like controllers and all. They also have bad floating PV systems.
Strength of Sungrow is majorly in the R & D sector because 40% employees are from R&D. And for the same reason they are able to give you cutting edge technology.
They have the world’s largest factory for inverter manufacturing. The global production capacity is 145 GW/year where India stands at 10 GW/year.
Sungrow’s India journey
Sungrow can always meet your demands for PV plants
Shri Swetal Shah Technical Advisor – Climate Change Department, “We have noticed India is developing its RE sector and in recent times we have seen in this field we are also becoming more and more ‘atma nirbhar’ in terms of renewable energy systems, manufacturing, deployment and so on. Future belongs to renewable energy as we are moving towards net zero ambitions. So mainly three things are pushing towards renewable energy. First and foremost is the climate change we see is how our climate is going with extreme events. So climate change is more visible than ever. Second thing is the financial part of RE, it is becoming more and more affordable and more and more widespread. And third thing is our energy independence, because India is entering into the ‘amrit kaal’ and particularly for our country. It is very important that we also get another independence which is energy independence in the next 25 years. We are also simultaneously seeing how we are making progress for energy storage in different forms, that is green hydrogen, battery storage and pump storage, etc. So in RE we are going with a mix of such things.
K.S “I would like to invite Mr. Aditya Malpani, Director & Regional Head- West – AMP Energy India to discuss the regulatory challenges and future prospects in Gujarat in particular.”
A.M “I just want to quickly take you through the hybrid policy, which is expiring in June 2023. That was the experiment which has been really successful. We have seen the kind of attraction for doing hybrid projects for open access. Gujarat has started the solar revolution in the country. So now the policy is expiring in June 2023, the question is what happens after that? I want to bring up some things with this presentation.
Gujarat’s renewable and storage purchase obligation
PRO Direct
Our suggestion is, when the ground of policy should be announced that the storage should be an integral part of it because that adds a lot of value specially to dis-com.
K.S “The Government is inviting suggestions from all stakeholders, you can initiate it there. We will advocate for the same things.”
Then Mr Kunj called upon Mr. Shobit Rai, Managing Director & CEO – Prozeal Infra Engineering Pvt. Ltd for his views on Gujarat solar market. Being a large-scale player I also would like him to throw some light on opportunities and challenges in open access, captive models in the state of Gujarat.”
S.R “ On a positive note, I mean of course there are challenges but there are also few positive things behind the state of Gujarat. Especially in the capital market, the restriction in old policy, we have this gap of 50% insulation in the contract demand. But now the cap is being restricted and inspite of having banking charges the captive market has picked up. If you look at 11 or 66 KW. It has substantially increased. So 50% restrictions and no banking charges of course. I would say, this would specially be for a lot of third party sales and this has discouraged the open access market. The positive is that as far as the captive market installation here the power plants on open access are being set up for their own consumption. The plant sizes have substantially increased which has actually increased the viability of the project. If you look at the hybrid policy, currently this particular hybrid policy is advantageous to the 66 KB. This restricts particular advantage to 11 KB consumers in Gujarat. Also if you look at the other positives that we look specially in the open access market because now with the net metering restricted to 500 KW, most of the consumers are having very limited options. This has also been an advantage to the companies who are specially operating on the ground mounted or utility scale EPC. To basically provide open access power via the captive route to cater to these kinds of industries as well. Now another good thing is that the government of Gujarat has started giving group captive approvals so even with an investment of 26% equity somebody can get advantage of getting captive power availing all the benefits like cross subsidy and additional surcharge.”
Mr. Hardik Vyas, Head – New Initiatives), GM Business Development – Enerparc Energy Pvt. Ltd. joined the panel discussion along with Mr. Keyur Rakholiya, CEO – Heaven Designs Pvt Ltd and Mr. Himanshu Wadhwani Deputy Manager Business Development EKI Energy Services Ltd.
For the concluding remark Mr Kunj said, “Gujarat is well poised for a big leap in solar installations. Whatever policy dilemma or hiccups were there we have left it behind and when the banking charges were introduced people have left with this shocking news but now everyone has started accepting the banking charges considering the benefits also. I believe with this upcoming wind-solar hybrid policy, it should be very good in terms of industry and with the upcoming solar park in Khawda of 30,000 MW, Gujarat will definitely stand on top.
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