The Committee said it is highly disappointed with the performance of the ministry in the rooftop solar sector, saying that it had achieved a mere 11 per cent of the target by October 2019
New Delhi: The government’s rooftop solar target of 40 gigawatt (GW) by 2022 is unrealistic and it is highly unlikely that it will be met on time, Parliamentary standing committee on energy has said.
The Committee said in its latest report that as per the year-wise targets set to install 40 GW by 2022, there should have been an installed rooftop solar capacity of 16,000 MW by 2018-19 but as of October 15, 2019, only 1,826 MW capacity has reportedly been installed, which means that the achievement is only 11.50 per cent of the target.
The panel noted National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) has estimated a rooftop solar potential of 42.8 gigawatt (GW) and accordingly, a target of 40 GW of installed capacity by 2022 has been set by the government.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has now revised the yearly rooftop solar targets, according to which 3,000 Mw capacity has to be commissioned during 2019-20. The Committee said MNRE should give this programme a serious relook otherwise it will derail the entire National Solar Mission.
The panel recommended that the process of subsidy disbursement should be made simpler and faster and the ministry needs to proactively advertise the benefits of having rooftop solar installations and the incentives provided by the government for the same.
“The ministry should make arrangements so that the cost payable by the consumer may be recovered through monthly installments as people are generally reluctant to invest the whole amount at a time,” the committee said.
The committee further recommended that single window clearance system should be adopted for approvals like connectivity, net-metering, electricity inspection, limitation in sanctioned load, etc.
There is an installed solar PV manufacturing capacity of 3 GW for solar PV cells and around 10 GW for solar PV modules and there is no commercial production in India for upstream stages of solar PV manufacturing like wafers, ingots and polysilicon, it said.
MNRE told the Standing Committee that the price of solar equipment produced in the country is not competitive as compared to that of foreign manufacturers, especially Chinese manufacturers and about 85 per cent of solar equipment, cells and modules are imported from China and other countries like Vietnam and Malaysia.
The ministry told the committee the reasons for poor domestic manufacturing capacity include lack of integrated set up, high cost of land and electricity, lack of skilled workforce, low capacity utilization, high cost of financing and lack of modern technology resulting in higher cost of production etc.
“The ministry should work to provide subsidy or viability gap funding (VGF) and low interest rate loans to domestic manufacturers so as to make them competitive,” the report said.
The committee also expressed concern about the lack of domestic solar manufacturing capacity in the country and said it is necessary for India to support domestic solar manufacturing as over-reliance on any foreign country puts Indian solar sector at a risk of disruption in supply chain.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
