Rooftop in Indian Context Jpgupta

8/13/2019 Rooftop in Indian Context Jpgupta

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APAC

The Untapped Gigantic Potential of Solar Rooftop Projects in India

In India, if a solar panel is installed on every possible roof, and used wisely with proper storage,

the electricity bill will become zero and all within comfortable zone of user. The rush has just

begun.

By J.P. Gupta

India is having more than 300 million rooftops. Finding a solar rooftop site heredepends on understanding the full breadth of legal, regulatory and environmentalissues, in particular, for large-scale projects running in MW. In domestic or residential rooftop project of KW capacity, there is no such issue and companieswho want to go for such assignment, market is very vast and sky is the limit. UtilityBoard electricity supply availability to 1.2 billion populations on all India averagebasis is 50% only. This supply is also erratic, load shedding, blackouts and

brownouts are rule of the day. Often when sun shines and it is hot, i.e.,environmental temperature is above 40 degrees Celsius and electricity going off due to multi reason becomes unbearable to everyone. To common population at

this juncture diesel is basic prime mover for generation of distributed type of electricity and sold at US$1per Ltr (INR 45.00). The diesel generating set produces maximum 3.00 kWh of energy per Ltr. So per kWh (each unit) generator running cost is 33.33 cents (INR 15). Considering the life cycle (capex andopex) of such small generator of 1-10 kW capacity, estimated LCOE is 44.00 cents (INR 19.8). Thisunaffordable price for this developing country is very high and also produces multi-faced problems.Inverters meet bare basics for limited hours. Availability of power 24x7 yields enjoyment of higher livingstandard to the society. They are deprived of this.This is the turning point. Middle class population has roof but no particular knowledge to harvestelectricity from the sun. Such population constitutes majority across the country. In one line, it is

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translated as unique opportunity for rooftop pr ojects in India. The other logic is the result of a surveyconducted in the year 2010, favored the power generation through sustainability and among allrenewable methods solar energy is in the limelight and abundantly available. India covers 20% of theworld population in 3% land area. Land use in UP, West Bengal, Gujarat and almost all over the countryhas seen complex multiple problems. Looking at relative roles of ground-based and roof-mountedproject, it is easy to interpret that roof-mounted solar panel is preferred and commands more premiumover ground-based projects in India having the best sunshine from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. for more than 320days. Most roofs from flat to 60 degree can accommodate photovoltaic panels of any type. Shading fromtree and neighbor buildings on photovoltaic panels dramatically reduces their effectiveness. The locationof home or office or any other commercial premises and HNI and local climate will play into where weplace our solar panels. Wind speed and salty atmosphere can also affect solar systems. There aremany style and design available now in the market that works well to reduce this ill effect. Shading byany means even by bird’s feathers and shit droppings reduces performance up to 20% and one quarter of the area of the panel reduces efficiency by 70% or so, as per actual site experience gained by us inthe past seven years. The panel size is correlated to our home’s energy use, space available, type of roof and many of the above stated factors. In an estimated way, each sq. ft. panel will generate 10 to 12watt of power and this will be helpful in all senses. Assume a home owner wants 1,000 watt system sohe needs about 90/100 sq. ft. area of roof panels with other permutation and combination of components. A battery backup adds about 25% to 30% cost to rooftop panels. In India, power supplydiffers from state to state and load shedding is a local phenomena. So it is an actuality that the majority

of people have battery with their old inverter systems, and this facilitates them to charge it by solar panels and modification in the system helps them to distribute their load using maximum green energywith incremental cost. There is a word of caution here. A good installation and a poor one can both startoff with the same materials, electrical equipment and wiring. It is the installation that will take theseingredients and make the solar system effective for 25 years for your rooftops, always use services of professional, bankable and reputable installers. They comply with all the requirements of IEC 61730 andIEC 61215 ed2 and also other relevant LORS. A study conducted at appropriate level at 14 States of India is quite encouraging. The detail for a nuclear family of 4 persons is considered as a commonpattern of society and the study is prepared in Figure 1.



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Government and Regulatory Stimulus

All governments are now tremendously encouraging this distributed way of generation of energy andrays of implementable solutions are seen like:1. Government of India: Implementation of the program on ‘Rooftop PV & Small Solar Power GenerationProgramme’ (RPSSGP) for first phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) till 31stMarch 2013.2. Government of Rajasthan: Request for selection for setting up 50 projects of 1 MW (AC) each smallsolar rooftop PV plants to be connected on 11 kV level at 33/11 kV Discoms Substation in Raj. Under Rajasthan Solar Energy Policy 2011 by Sept 2011.3. Government of Gujarat: Planning rooftop project at Ahmedabad, Gandhi Nagar, Surat, Vadodara,Rajkot and other cities (Residential, commercial and Industrial) (Desh Gujarat) 30th July 2011.4. Government of Delhi: Declared on the 4th of June to promote rooftop solar and bring the policy within3 to 4 month time.5. Government of Karnataka: Declared to promote rooftop policy in the state of Karnataka.6. Government of A.P.: Andhra Pradesh Government has taken major rooftop solar initiative for 20 MWptotal capacity in December 2010.7. Government of Chhatisgarh: Encouragement for power generation on rooftop solar PV dated09.07.2010.8. Government of Tamilnadu: On the 1st of June 2011 declared to come out with rooftop solar generation policy for residential/multi-storied houses for almost 1,000 MWp within 2 to 3 months.9. Government of Orissa: Orissa Renewable Energy Development Agency, Bhubaneshwar has alsofloated tender in May 2011 for solar rooftop project.From the above, it is seen that many state governments have either declared rooftop policy or on theverge of declaration and the rest are equally enthusiastic to tap this untouched virgin potential exceptGovt. of Maharashtra having dual thinking for best reason known to them and Govt. of India is planning







in a big way to promote rooftop solar power generation.

Investment Sources

1. Securing attractive source of finance to propel this green power to commercial success includingbridge loan and non recourse loan as per requirement of institution or society or corporation or special

purpose vehicle or any entity according to eligibility through bank and other non-banking financialorganization.2. There are private financial institution and companies who have come up recently and accepted thedepth of the requirement of this sector as a profitable investment providing community-based loans for the rooftop installations, etc.3. As per practice in the Western world, some institutions will shortly introduce the lease-based rooftopproject. The owner will lease out the roof for some consideration for a period of 25 years. Developer willinstall the system at his cost and will take away all after expiry of lease. Developer is free to generaterenewable electricity and sell it to the utility and also entitled for all related benefits like CERs.

Business Plan

1. The rooftop solar is now catching the eyes of allconcerned developer/integrator and gettingpreferential attention due to inherent quality like lessrequirement of fund (and no land problem) ascompared to any other similar capacity land-basedproject with identical output as shown in Figure 2.2. For rooftop to be an investment, the panels to saveyou money in the long run. The system costs acertain amount of money to install. They then make acertain amount of energy each year saving us acertain amount of money off our electricity bill. After anumber of years, the system is paid off in power savings directly. There is indirect advantage like

social life uplift, opportunity cost and production makeup cost. After taking into account all such heads asper norms and practice the power generated by panelcomes as pure profit. The years it takes to reach this‘break-even’ point is called solar payback period.Present trend shows this period below 10 years (per MW cost in range of INR 8 Cr. And LCOE INR 11 per kWh) but everyone wants this period to be as short aspossible. Rooftop installation with water jacketing hasvery short payback period of 5 years. With fastdevelopment of solar technology on rooftopPV/rooftop CPV/rooftop thin-film/rooftop dye-sensitized film, their mountings, racking, tracking andaccessories, scaling up the production and healthycompetition, this period is guessed to be universally 5years in the next five years and per kWh around INR4/5.3. The appraisal report to be prepared by at least onemember of Appraisal Institute. Complete positiveeffect of this system like securing our energy future,protection of environment, specific advantage of decentralized and distributed system in translatingless requirement of compensating arrangement,economical implementable solution to energyindependence, etc.







4. Selection of perfect applicable technology, their manufacturer, inspection procedure, design,installation, testing, commissioning methodology, difference between branded and non-brandedequipment and system, suitability of module, cost and efficiency, PV/thin-film/dye-sensitized film/CPV,their tracking method like fix, single tracking or dual axis tracking, repair and maintenance for 25 years,life cycle cost, LCOE, etc.5. Plan to indicate all incentives, tax relief, carbon credits, environmental objective, impact of rooftop asbuffer insulation, less maintenance of roof by owner (in 10 year period food corporation lost 8 million tonwheat due to leakage of roof in the godown) and should be commercially recoverable by application of this rooftop.6. Creation of new jobs at all levels directly and indirectly, increase of GDP, potential to adopt by utilitiesas well as public on distributive scale, so all eggs in one basket without much of scratching the head.This can work ON GRID with FiT and OFF GRID as well as partial load arrangement with intelligentselector depending upon load.7. It looks simple but it is not as simple task as most people think when it comes to closer look for suchnew technology implementation. Down the line, you will see the invisible miles of red tape. There isalways a project killing combination in the permitting process. No systematic process is published byauthorities so far on rooftop projects. Their guidelines/acts are overriding each other. Sometimes thedepartmental officials are themselves not having experience with this new permitting system tries to givea negative thought and makes the whole machinery as inefficient. Regulatory guidelines are alsoconfusing at times and places and vary from city to city and state to state so this is the right time whenMNRE get in the game and clear all the doubts. Till 2010-2011, completed rooftop is less than 1MWp.

8. Residential, commercial and large rooftop panels are in practice for electricity generation from KWscale to several hundreds of MW. Leaders are the U.S.A., the U.K., China, Japan, Germany and Spain.There is large choice for rooftop panels, mountings, interconnection, inverter, battery and software. Costalso depends on roof structure and surroundings. This affects directly on system price and performance.Sometimes due to circumstances less option on the above has to be accepted. Japan and China haveused railway rooftop and produced lacs of MWH so far. The financial analysis given by some of authorities has shown attractive payback period for their installations.Several assumptions are required to be made in this effort while projecting the payback period, demand,etc. Assumptions related to areas are based on measurement of rooftop as per google earth site andother search engine and applicable software available in the market like www.roofestimating.com,www.metalroofing.com/applicad www.stairsoftware.com and other applicable software as well richexperience on generic software of author self developed at California. Maps of Government of India,public domain and various bulletins of several departments, municipal corporations, State Industries

Development Corporations, Development Authorities of cities like DDA, JDA and MMRDA etc.,geographical areas of India, Government Renewable agencies, National Housing Board, and also thestudy conducted by UNDP and MNRE at Gurgaon-Manesar on Roof top system in 2010 is helpful whereas DNI 1000W/M2 and standard temperature 25 degrees Celsius is normal. There is a variety of rooftopmodule and diversity of weather and atmospheric condition and so is the technology and componentsavailable in the market hence a mean of all the above is chosen for this purpose. For present among allrooftop structure only fixed rooftop is chosen which refers to the fact that the legs of the mount only haveone setting and are not adjustable. Their cost is driven by material cost of steel/aluminum and panelefficiency so mean of both is taken. Readers are advised to consider the assumption carefully whilegoing through this article.Roof in India is made in a special way utilizing local input available from area to area. Mounting systemon the roof is varying and different at locations. Design, fabrication and construction require specificattention of developer/supplier and this changes from North India to South India as well as East of Indiato West part. Labor is cheap as compared to other Western part of the world. Mounts need to be

modified depending upon the region, though climate is tropical. Curved and flat tile roof is seen in allparts of India along with pakka/RCC roof. For determining the moisture content of raft or roof toascertain strength local skilled workers use their experience.GI sheet and asbestos sheet roof is also common. In fact, state building code exists but not commonlyknown here and roof warranties and National roofing contractor association like these do not exist here.New buildings in Government and private sectors have sheet metal whose life can be evaluatedcomfortably. Now there are policies being introduced for rapid transformation and you can surely be apart of this to expand your business to success. A table is prepared to indicate the immediately availablepotential in India. This shows that almost 92,700 MW power could be generated on existing roofs withrooftop installations. A bird’s eye view exhibit is given in Figure 3 and 4.




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The total of Figure 3 and Figure 4 is 92,700 MW (Say 92.7 GW).In other words, if we have contiguous land of 92.7 Sq. Km. (which is impossible) it is able to generate92,700 MWp solar power as per international standards of 1,000 Wp/M2. The beauty of this applicationis that power is being generated at place of consumption in urbanized area. Transmission anddistribution losses are negligible. This is sustainable without emission of any harmful gases and nomoving parts and no noise and ditching nuclear power. Unmistakably this alternative energy source fromrooftop is the best among all.Several Indian companies in collaboration with Germany/Spain/US solar companies are now planning toenter in this field and have taken proper step for start-up initially with institutions like Indian Railwayshaving very large rooftop potential in thousands of MW, dispensing outlet units of gas/petrol/diesel

















spread all through the country totaling about nine hundred thousands, Warehousing corporations, SteelIndustries, Textile Industries and all put together can generate several thousands of MWs and the listgoes on for these coming solar companies to share profits out of this business. Several private Industrialgroups and Industries centers having very large rooftop available freely with them are in advance stageof making up their mind for harvesting this energy. Industries look at capital expenditure versusoperating expenses and how quickly they obtain their capital investment through incentives in operatingexpenses and costs of brown outs or down time. Many facilitator companies have recently sprung upwho collects such data for preparing a ready-reckoner for rooftop developers like height, area, yard

projection, HNI, architectural restriction, local permit, orientation, inspection process, financingmechanism, installation, commissioning and handing over, etc. Last but not least it is very clear that inIndia if a solar panel is installed on every possible roof, and used wisely with proper storage, theelectricity bill will become zero and all within comfortable zone of user. The rush has just begun so weinvite all to take part, contact us, and enjoy the advantage of time to reap up the profit.

J.P. Gupta is Founder and President of world’s renowned technology company, Solar Energy California,CA, the U.S.A., which has been in business since 2002. Gupta is known as encyclopedia of the solar Industry with 30+ years of rich experience. His significant contribution is the solar system with recorded lowest LCOE = 7 cents/kWh. The secret of his success is 24x7 worldwide quality service to his clients insolar jobs.

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Rooftop in Indian Context Jpgupta