Rooftop Solar Provides Opportunity To The Individual To Fight Against Climate Change – EQ Mag Pro
The webinar was held by EQ magazine Pro on February 23, 2022, powered by Growatt and moderated by Anshuman Sharma, Vice President, SolarSquare Energy Private Limited. In this webinar, India’s residential rooftop and distributed solar market outlook have been discussed.
Anshuman Sharma started the discussion and addressed the panelist. He said, “All of us know that India is at the forefront of this latest change that has been demanded not only by when it comes to climate change but also from the consumer segment itself when it comes to commercial incentives that come with going with renewable energy.
The topic for today is again something that will be at the forefront of India for the next decade because of all the benefits. The Government of India has made its mark all over the world in terms of making very broad global statements about what we want to achieve as a nation and where we want to see ourselves not only in terms of adoption of this technology but also in terms of what value are we going to add in the whole value chain of the system.”
Mohammad Yameen, Deputy Manager, SECI said, “We all know that we have embarked on one of the largest solar energy programmes and India has made commendable progress in this field, who is one of the torchbearers in the world. The recent announcement by the Government to achieve net-zero by 2070 have again integrated the storage industry of the country. We have been witnessing increased climate change-related events.
People are getting more and more aware and conscious about this issue and are also realizing that concerned efforts at an individual level will be required to mitigate the climate change issues. Rooftop solar provide an opportunity to the individual to contribute to this fight against climate change. so with the government’s ambitious targets in this renewable energy sector and combined with the interest of individual persons, rooftop solar will play an important and increasingly important role in India’s energy transition.”
He also talked about the advantages of rooftop solar and said, “It reduces the requirement for the generation of electricity the reduces the dependency on diesel generators. It also reduces the requirement of infrastructure upgrades and better voltage regulation. The rooftop solar prices have been reducing continuously for the last few years and now it has become very much competitive and cheaper than most of the commercial tariffs. Due to the lower cost in smaller tickets size, rooftop solar is a very fastly deployable energy resource. there are many many positive interventions from the government and most of the states have their notified solar policies.”
“Several startups are broadly operating in four categories which are energy management, data analytics, communication platforms and market platform. So there are upcoming business opportunities in these spheres for many startups. The rooftop solar and distributed energy market is expected to see rapid growth in the coming years. In technology and business models, distributed energy generation will certainly become more and more lucrative and beneficial for other stakeholders,” he said.
Mukesh Dadhich, Head of Sustainability and Clean Technology and Business Development, BSES Yamuna Power Limited told the panelist that BSES was first in Delhi to release net metering connections in Delhi in 2104 and since then in around 150 sq. km, BSES has achieved 30 MW of solar rooftop capacity in our area. It has a dedicated team that is serving in this field, whether it is a job of awareness, outreach, designing, ensuring quality, supervising at different levels profitability or checking. BSES is not only supporting and guiding but also providing inputs to vendors and consumers. It provides single window solutions to our consumers and is a part of the MNRE phase two programme.
Shantanu Sirsath, Technical Head India, Growatt New Energy said, “Every day there is some sort of innovations coming in the order. The latest trend is going on is regarding the high-end modules that are available in the market so definitely with higher-rated modules it becomes very easy to stay with the space on the roof, that’s why most of the people are now going these but with the usage of these modules, the current limit has been increased so it has again become the challenge for the inverter manufacturers to cope with this fast-changing trends in the PV module. As an inverter manufacturer we are having different options that we are implementing in the inverter so that whichever newer model is available in the market, customers can easily utilise it with the existing trend.”
Moreover, he briefed about his organization, “Growatt is in the business from 2013 into the Indian market and it’s around nine years that we are having our presence in the Indian market with a team of more than 16 service engineers. So we can deal with all the in order related issues in a short period and end customer doesn’t get any losses in terms of generation. We have sold around 2.5 Lac units for the Indian market itself ranging from 1 kilowatt onwards up to 253 kw. From the starting itself, Growatt has always been into the residential and rooftop segment. In the rooftop segment, we’re ranking number one for the last three years and we’re hoping for 2021 also we would be having the same ranking.
So definitely when we’re talking about any segment maybe it can be rooftop or for the CNI or the utility, the overall selection criteria for inverter play a major role and for any queries, it’s always advisable to directly get in contact with the company having any sort of small issues.”
When asked, “a new decision has taken by MNRE in terms of providing a direct benefit transfer of subsidy to residential customers. So, what are the pros and cons of it and what impact do you see it across the value chain?” Anchit Gupta, Chief Commercial Officer, Mysun replied, “It is a very relevant question at this point and it was touched upon briefly earlier as well well. It is the option for consumers to install a residential consumers to install solar systems either on their own or through any vendor and be able to then apply for subsidy and get the subsidy directly. This is something which was definitely the need of the hour and there are multiple benefits.
First and foremost, it allows consumers a choice and for them to be able to go for systems of their choice. For residential customers, this does open up the market significantly, for players who are focused on quality. the solar systems on homeowners roofs is concerned because there is a big angle of safety there as these are not industrial setups where there is an engineering team available or there’s a power procurement team available there is these are individual home owners who do not have a support system to manage these systems so they need systems which would work and would be safe. They can go for different kinds of products that they can install on the rooftop so it gives them that flexibility.”
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