Solar rooftops: A bright answer to Delhi's power woes or just a passing eclipse?

By Dinesh Kapur With the BJP giving due emphasis to promoting solar energy in its pre-poll manifesto, now that it has formed the new government, there is an increasing clamour from solar industry stakeholders to promote solar rooftop generation. In particular, the focus is on the National Capital Region that happens to have the highest peak demand in the country (more than 50 percent higher than Mumbai). This push for solar is a natural consequence of the realisation that Delhi’s peak demand has consistently been over 5000 MW for the month of June and is forecast to reach a record of 6100 MW this year amid long power cuts and consistent load shedding. To put this into perspective, in 2009 Delhi’s peak demand was around 4,330 MW. The increase is unsurprising as India is well on its way to double its electricity requirement by 2020 (in comparison to 2009-10 levels). [caption id=“attachment_1611105” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] While the shortfall for Delhi is often greater than the entire generating capacity of most individual coal-fired thermal power plants in the country, the problem isn’t necessarily a lack of quality generation capacity — it is in fact the lack of actual generation. This is due to high prices of coal, the unavailability of coal, and most significantly high power purchase costs that loss-making electricity distributing companies have to pay to buy power from the grid (or generation facilities). Again, these high costs are unsurprising because the burden of corruption and inefficiency manifests as myriad ‘operating costs’ for power generation. These may include payouts for coal allocation, bribes for diversion of domestic coal for exports, money to grease the palms of unscrupulous railway officials overseeing haulage, expenses for hiring musclemen to settle land disputes, interest on unrecovered payments, among several other things. Coming back to the NCR region, persistent aggregated commercial and technical losses — a consequence of rampant electricity theft, non-payment of dues, and poor management — has exacerbated the feeling of ‘powerlessness’. The silver lining for India’s power situation is that these undesirable realities are creating a favourable climate for solar power generation in India. And with Delhi boasting an urbanisation of 93 percent, several stakeholders — beyond obvious ones in the solar industry like manufacturers, consultants and trade associations — are working towards proving the business case for rooftop power. In an attempt to deliver on its promise of promoting solar energy, on 26 June 2014 the new government decided to continue the policy of providing a 30 percent subsidy on the capital cost of rooftop solar projects. Depending upon who is putting up the money for the project — the homeowner, independent developer or a channel partner — the subsidy offers a discount or a monetary incentive to install solar panels on rooftops. On the surface this could be cited an as an example of policy continuity that is desired for market stability. However, does the continuation of the policy also imply continuation of issues such as a shortage of funds, delayed payments, absence of mechanism to verify projects, and mid-term downsizing of the budget allocated for capital subsidy? Assuming that the bottleneck of delivering the full subsidy payment on time is removed — will this be money well spent? A report by Greenpeace India and solar strategy consulting firm Bridge to India gives the encouraging and optimistic estimate that Delhi can potentially generate 2557 MW by tapping only 4.42 percent of the available rooftop area. Instinctively one might wonder if this is possible considering the unplanned, haphazard, and heterogeneous nature of urbanisation in Delhi. Add to that a general scepticism over the ability of most buildings to bear the additional weight of panels and batteries (which can be several hundreds of kilograms depending on the capacity, type of panel etc.) and concerns over the effect of Delhi’s rising air pollution on actual generation and one might begin to question these claims. However, far from back of the envelope, the aforementioned report’s methodology stresses that it has arrived at the potential of 2557 MW by only taking into account area from rooftops built on sturdy concrete constructions. It discounts 20 percent of the conservatively estimated area on account of old constructions. It also makes adjustments for varied factors such as obstructions to sunlight from built structures, the effect of shadows, and the fact that there are several socio-economic groups that cannot afford to invest in solar. As a consequence the evaluated potential corresponds to a built up area covering only 1.6 per cent of the city’s entire land area. For a space-constrained city like Delhi this is a very attractive proposition. With the price of electricity from solar approaching grid parity for the domestic sector, this makes the possibility of adding over 2 GW of capacity addition from solar energy a strategy the must be pursued. However, it is important for the government to recognise that while the numbers look good barriers to generating tangible units of electricity from solar rooftop projects might be more technical and institutional than financial. Some of the technical issues that need to be addressed are ensuring high quality installations, elaborating the criteria for supplying rooftop power directly to the grid and/or using batteries, identifying suitable grid interconnection points if power is fed back to the grid, maintaining appropriate voltage levels (preventing spikes), preventing unexpected power generation in isolated networks, forecasting renewable energy generation etc. The institutional or human resource gap lies in building capacity within the DISCOMS — responsible for distributing power to individual homes, and organisations like MCD, NDMC and CPWD that are traditionally responsible for construction/maintenance of Delhi’s building infrastructure, particularly in government houses that offer prime rooftop real estate. Facilitating interactions between project developers, these agencies and the next state government in Delhi is vital to identify issues ranging from teething problems such as understanding local single line diagrams/distribution networks to serious lapses such as grid instability, over heating of transformers and fault correction. Beyond agencies, the imperative of sensitising customers and involving them in discussions cannot be overlooked either. With several more redevelopments and new constructions planned, such an exercise can build capacity to absorb requirements for solar power in the planning stage. The fact that Delhi’s own solar policy is yet to be notified must also be remediated immediately. These barriers are unlikely to be overcome by a simplistic approach limited to giving out capital subsidies. It might just end up placing white elephants on Delhi’s rooftops. If the Central Government (and the next State Government) is really serious about making the most of Delhi’s abundant sunshine, then it might be prudent for them to devise a scheme for several pilot projects that cluster individual installations. The government might consider inviting project developers to implement these projects. Each project may cater to different types of buildings or regions within the city to add a much-needed element of granularity to this substantial rooftop potential. It is likely that several seemingly healthy government buildings will completely fail to stand up to load requirements on account of dubious maintenance activities while other projects may benefit from seemingly trivial issues like pruning nearby trees or changing the capacity of local transformers, upgrading lines etc. Such cluster-based projects can meet the objective of providing lessons that are useful for accelerating the uptake of solar energy. Moreover, combining individual 1 to 50 kW projects into larger projects will bring economies of scale - certainly for installations. Assigning complete operational responsibilities to different project developers (one agency for multiple small projects) thereby centralising generation to a certain extent, might also offer a useful perspective on dealing with intermittency of renewable energy. In all cases learning by doing and learning as we go along will be the most effective approach. There is no denying that the sun will continue to shine with all its brightness on Delhi. The only question remains is whether we will be caught wincing at the glare or will we benefit from collaborative verve. *Dinesh Kapur is a Jubilee Scholar from the University of Cambridge where he read for an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development. After a recent stint assisting a Member of Parliament he is currently working as an Independent Consultant in the area of Corporate Sustainability and Renewable Energy.