MNRE sets target for Commercial & Industrial sector for FY 2016-17

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is implementing a Grid connected Rooftop and Small Solar Power Plants Programme.

The Government has set a target of 40,000 MWp of grid interactive rooftop solar (RTS) PV plants by 2022. These RTS   plants   will   be   set   up   in   residential, commercial, industrial,   institutional, Government/ PSU sectors ranging from 1 kWp to 500 kWp capacities.

30% subsidy scheme is available for RTS projects in Residential I Social I Institutional sector, while 15 – 25% incentive is available for such projects in Government/PSU sectors.

The government is also working on initiatives to collate demand from cities and Ministries/ Departments for these sectors. However subsidy or incentive from the government is not available for RTS projects in Industrial & Commercial sectors, thus these segments purely depend on the Accelerated Depreciation and on the tariff differential between DISCOM rates and RTS bid rates.

With Accelerated Depreciation, RTS projects in the Industrial & Commercial sectors arc viable in various States, except Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Jharkahnd, Assa m, etc. The Govt. is also trying to channelize multilateral loans of Asian Development Bank, National Development bank and World Bank at concessional rates to RTS developers through SBI, Canara Bank and PNB.

For these segments, the RTS target is 50% or 20,000 MW. In this case the role of DISCOMS for operationalizing Net Metering regulations appears to be very challenging. Here the role of Channel Partners will be crucial said MNRE in a statement.

Channel Partners are expected to participate and liaise with units in Industrial & Commercial sectors to take up RTS projects where consumption is more than RTS generation.

Operational  guidelines  for  the  Channel  Partners  were  issued  last year wherein it is laid down that MNRE will regularly review the  progress and  performance of each  Channel Partner. However, no target has been fixed before Chunnel Partners to check such performance or progress. Hence for making strong push for RTS in commercial and industrial sectors, following targets are proposed for this financial year:-

MNRE notes that targets will also be applied to all fresh empanelment cases. It is also proposed that if a Channel Partner is not able to achieve these targets for consecutive two years, it will be downgraded to next category.