How well is India tapping its rooftop solar potential?

Sub: Schemes

Sec: Renewable energy

Context:

The country’s installed RTS capacity increased by 2.99 GW in 2023-2024, the highest growth reported in a year.

Statistics regarding RTS:

As of March 31 this year, the total installed RTS capacity in India was 11.87 GW, per the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
In 2015, the government revised this target to 100 GW by 2022, including a 40 GW RTS component, with specific yearly targets for each State and Union Territory.
In December 2022, India achieved an installed RTS capacity of about 7.5 GW.
It extended the deadline for the 40 GW target to 2026.

What is the RTS programme?

The Indian government launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in January 2010.
It was the first major initiative to promote the growth of solar energy.
The main objective was to produce 20 GW of solar energy (including RTS) in three phases: 2010-2013, 2013-2017, and 2017-2022.
Rooftop solar (RTS) has the potential to revolutionize India’s energy landscape, offering a sustainable, decentralized, and affordable solution to meet the country’s growing electricity needs and making consumers self-reliant.
Based on the RTS capacities calculated as of March 31, 2024, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan have taken big strides.
India’s first solar-powered village, is in Gujarat and has 1,300 RTS systems of 1 kW each.
Maharashtra, with an RTS capacity of 2,072 MW, is one of the top performing states owing to its robust solar policies and conducive regulatory environment.
Rajasthan being the largest state by area and with a high solar irradiance, boasts of the highest RTS potential in the country, with a capacity of 1,154 MW.

Various schemes regarding solar rooftop:

The ‘Pradhan Mantri Surya Ghar:

Muft Bijli Yojana’ is a flagship initiative to fit 1 crore households with RTS systems and help them get up to 300 units of free electricity every month.
The scheme Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana, with an investment of over Rs. 75,000 crores, aims to light up 1 crore households by providing up to 300 units of free electricity every month.
The scheme aims to incentivise the adoption of solar energy among residential consumers, promoting sustainability and reducing reliance on conventional energy sources.
It is a grid connected rooftop solar PV system, where the DC power generated from a solar panel converted to AC power using a power conditioning unit/Inverter and is fed to the grid.
An average system size of 2 kW for the targeted households will result in a total RTS capacity addition of 20 GW.
Under the ‘Suryamitra’ (solar PV technician) training programme initiated in 2015, more than 51,000 technicians had been trained as of December 2022.
As the implementation of the ‘Muft Bijli Yojana’ goes into full swing, RTS policies including net-metering regulations, grid-integration standards, and building codes should be reviewed and updated.
The virtual net-metering and group net-metering options need to be fast-tracked for consumers with inadequate roof space for RTS installations.