Govt proposes schemes for rooftop solar

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has proposed SRISTI — Sustainable Rooftop Implementation for Solar Transfiguration of India — the scheme to incentivise the installation of roof top solar projects in India. An official statement said, “The concept, once approved, shall serve as the basis of revised scheme of MNRE for solar rooftop in Phase-II and will replace the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs note that has been submitted to cabinet since April this year.” The scheme will integrate discoms as an implementing agency in Phase-II of rooftop solar scheme, the statement added. The proposed scheme aims to achieve a national solar rooftop target of 40 GW till 2021-2022. It is proposed that a Central Financial Assistance will be provided only for installation of roof top solar plants in residential sectors. The residential users may install the plant of capacity as per their requirement and the respective State Electricity Regulatory Commission regulation. But, the subsidy support will be limited up to 5 kWp capacity of plant. The incentive towards subsidy to the residential sector is capped at ?18,000 per kW calculated at benchmark cost of ?60,000 per kW. The incentive to discoms for social, institutional, government sectors, commercial and industrial sector is capped at ?5,500 per kW calculated at benchmark cost of ?55,000 per kW. The total incentive for the residential sector stands at ?9,000 crore for 5000 MW of installations. The incentive to discoms is capped at ?14,450 crore for 35,000 MW of roof top solar installations. The total outlay is ?23,450 crore for 40,000 MW of roof top solar installations. Mentioning the sector wise targets, the proposal said that Commercial and industrial sector will set up 20,000 MW, the government, Residential, Social and the Institutional sector will set up 5,000 MW each.