SOLAR PENETRATION AND CHALLENGES IN RURAL MARKET

Mr. ​Sushil Kumar Sarawgi | Founder | Kor Energy India Pvt. Ltd

Renewable energy is one of the fastest growing sector in India and the government is very focused in this sector. In rural areas, there are still customer awareness is not as much as required. Majorly Solar Home Lighting Systems and Solar Street Lights meeting energy needs of rural markets in India.

India is fast adopting renewable energy. India’s total installed Solar Capacity crossed 35 GW in June 2020. Out of this approx. 2.1 GW came from Rooftop Solar Power plants and rest from large utility scale projects. India has an ambitious target of 100GW by 2022. Of this 40GW has to be achieved through rooftop solar. Solar Products like Solar Lalterns, Solar Cookers, Solar Home Lighting Systems and Solar Street Lights have helped meeting energy needs of Rural Market in India.

With about 300 clear and sunny days in a year, the calculated ​solar energy​ incidence on

India’s land area is about 5000 trillion ​kilowatt-hours​ (kWh) per year . The solar energy

available in a single year exceeds the possible energy output of all of the ​fossil

fuel​ energy reserves in India. The daily average solar-power-plant generation capacity 2​

in India is 0.20 kWh per m​ of used land area, equivalent to 1400–1800 peak rated capacity operating hours in a year with available, commercially-proven technology. This outlines the huge potential of Solar Power as Energy in India.

Especially about rooftop solar the adoption of the same is very less in both urban and rural areas. Out of 2.1GW of installed capacity of rooftop solar approximately 70 percent is accounted for by installation in the Commercial and Industrial Sector. Hence domestic sector adoption of Rooftop Solar is very less and without a great focus on this segment, it is not possible to reach anywhere near the target of 40GW Rooftop Solar Installation by year 2022.

Both Grid connected and offgrid rooftop Solar Installations need to be promoted in both urban and rural areas. Bottlenecks like hurdles in net metering, subsidy hampers the growth of rooftop solar in the domestic segment and in many states net metering restrictions in commercial and industrial solar installation is responsible for lower adoption of rooftop solar in that segment.

In rural areas still customers are not aware of solar systems, its benefits, policies like net metering, technological aspects leading to a lot of suspicion in them and low adoption of the same. In areas where grid availability is poor we see greater adoption of off grid or hybrid applications of Solar.

Government is also fast adopting rooftop solar at its buildings in both urban and rural areas and this also will give more confidence in advantages of rooftop solar to the population there leading to better penetration.

The cost per kilowatt of rooftop solar is one of the lowest in India and the reduction in rooftop solar prices coupled with competitive bidding done by most states in India to discover lowest rates has helped in increasing rooftop solar penetration in both urban and rural markets.

Focus on schemes specially catering to rural areas like solar water pumping and adoption of solar by agricultural sector under KUSUM will also lead to greater penetration of use of solar energy in Rural Sector in next few years.

With a need specific approach of rural sector and promoting such available products like Solar Pumps, Solar Street Lights, Solar Home Lighting Systems, Solar Cooking, Solar Drinking Water Systems along with on grid and off grid solar systems for domestic use, the adoption of Solar based energy could be increased in rural areas.

There is a need to develop more such need specific products for which all agencies should support any innovation