Growth of Solar Rooftop in India

At a time when the world is facing global warming and the burden on natural resources is increasing there’s a need to switch massively towards cleaner forms of energy such as solar power.

Puneet Goyal, Co-Founder, SunAlpha Energy Pvt. Ltd.

Many developed economies in the world have already started their solar programmes by targeting household rooftops.

Also, solar power has reached grid parity and is the cheapest source of distributed power across the world. After realizing the potential, the Centre also revises renewable energy targets every few years.

Today, India needs to move from a solar power producer to a raw material producer. The manufacturing capacity of all solar system components has not grown and India is a laggard in this matter.

Though many improvements have been done over the last 2-3 years. Many state governments have also taken a short sighted view and are facing a ‘buyer’s remorse’ in a falling capex market.

Now, capital subsidies are no longer needed in the industry and the subsidies, if any, should be higher in the value chain like manufacturing.

But there are many challenges which are still there in the market and need to be solved. Uneven and constantly changing state policies have created confusion in a market which is already technologically unclear in consumers mind leading to a rampant decision paralysis.

System integrators have to bear the brunt of this since their sales lead cycled and business development costs skyrocket. A single centrally controlled policy needs to be implemented. Insufficient land or roof area is another issue which every consumer faces.

Improvement in the plant efficiencies over the last 10 years have been significant in ensuring that the kWh generated per square feet keep improving. Solar power plants installation companies have come a long way today with 400 Wp becoming the new normal now.

This is direct 4x jump on the land use efficiency in 10 years. With commercially viable bifacial technologies around the corner, this number will jump to 500 Wp within 12-18 months. A higher Wp per Square foot has an added advantage of reduced Balance of System costs, which will push the industry and will help to grow the market in different sectors.

There are many measures which still need to be taken to support the solar rooftop in India. The next revolution in renewable will be in the storage segment and by 2022 storage is slated to be the enabler for the next 100 GW of renewable energy in India.

Distributed generation and storage will change the way people depend on the grid for their everyday power needs. Energy independence will become a new norm. It is the result that even common people are also acknowledging rooftop solar power.

India’s young and energetic population will adapt this new technology in no time. Recent studies by international research agencies have declared India to be the cheapest solar market in the world. The transition from a cool to prudent technology has been great till now. It is the time to make this from prudent to dependable over the next 5 years. So that country will fully dependent upon the renewable solar energy and lead towards better future.