Tangedco power play could cast clouds over solar plants – Times of India

For V Sumathi, installing a 3KW rooftop solar plant at her house in Neelankarai in 2013 was a bold decision. Spending Rs 4 lakh was a big ask, but soon it reduced her bimonthly electricity bills by 90% and contributed to the country’s green energy policy.
But four years later, Sumathi is not sure if she would recommend rooftop solar panels to her friends. She has read about the revised policy Tangedco has proposed for low transmission (LT) consumers eligible for net metering. Through energy auditors and an online petition she realised that if the revisions went through, investing in solar power would be a loss. What’s more, she might also be taxed by Tangedco for going green!
At present, users with rooftop solar plants pay only for the total electricity consumed after subtracting what their plants generate (see graphic, Scenario 2). If the contracted demand is 4KW, a user can install a 4KW solar plant. But Tangedco proposes to allow installation of plants with 50% of contracted demand only. It wants to fix the rate for rooftop solar power to 50% of what it pays to companies setting up solar power plants. So if a company has bid Rs 4.5 per unit for constructing a plant, Tangedco will pay consumers with rooftop plants Rs 2.25 per unit.
“It is an inappropriate comparison because it equates volumes of massive scales spread over open areas to challenging structures capturing some amount of power on terraces where large scale generation is not possible,” said Saswat Das, an energy auditor and solar integrator based in Chennai. The vast areas used for mega solar plants can be conserved for agriculture or industries, Das said.
Also the transmission and distribution (T&D) losses for rooftop plants is less than 1%, while for big plants it is around 20%-25%. Tangedco lost 21,000 million units in 2014-15 to T&D, an RTI reply said.
The return on investment for a 3KW plant, which costs around Rs 3 lakh, is around 10 years based on the current policy. But if one were to calculate as per the new proposal, the period doubles as the benefits on the bimonthly bill are reduced.
Advocate V Suresh, who has installed a rooftop solar plant, said Tangedco’s proposal will drive people away from making the sizeable investment to go green.
Former director (engineering) in TNERC P Muthusamy said apart from practical demerits, the proposal was legally untenable. “The TN Solar Energy Policy, 2012 states that homes connected to the grid and feeding excess power back will accrue power credits. Even TNERC can’t change the energy accounting concept of net metering prescribed by the policy, leave alone Tangedco,” he said.
But a senior Tangedco official said domestic consumers were already enjoying subsidies even as discom bled heavily. “We are doing this to improve our cash flow and reduce losses,” the official said.

Source: TOI