New rules for rooftop solar capacity addition

Union Power Ministry’s latest rules regarding consumer rights are being seen as impediments to the pace of capacity addition of the rooftop solar in the country as they disincentivise commercial and industrial users from installing such power generation capacities in their premises. These consumers were earlier earning around Rs 7/unit by selling the surplus power generated from their rooftop solar plants to the state-run discoms. However, under the new mandate they will be billed through “gross metering”, and compensated at rates close to around Rs 3.5– Rs 4/unit.

“If the government does not provide the export provision under the new rules, going ahead hardly 100-150 MW of rooftop power will get added to the system against 600 MW that we saw in 2020, completely negating the growth of the industry players and increasing the client payback time from 3-4 years to six years at least,” Puneet Goyal, founder of solar firm SunAlpha commented. He added that almost 85-90% of the new capacities that would have come to commercial and industrial segment will completely cease to exist because of gross metering provisions.