Though both the Central and State governments have been talking for some years now about promoting the use of rooftop solar installations at homes to reduce the burden on the grid, ground realities are different. In most cases, people who install solar rooftop solutions seem to not depend on the incentives.
The Ministry of Natural and Renewable Energy’s subsidy for domestic solar rooftop installations has come down from Rs. 60,000 per KW to Rs. 45,000 per KW, points out K.C.P. Ashok Kumar, president of the Tamil Nadu Solar Energy Developers Association. At a time when the cost of the rooftop solar panel components is all going up – the cost escalation is very steep, especially for the batteries used for off-grid solutions – the costs are being transferred to the customers.
The Tamil Nadu government has a subsidy component for home solar rooftops but only if they are ‘on-grid’ systems. The system requires ‘Net Metering System’ to monitor power generation in the day time. However the systems are not easily available. The government should ensure that enough meters be procured so that solar installations will be smoothly installed, members of the Association say.
Often, those interested in setting up solar rooftop panels give up after a cost-benefit analysis. The break-even time for a person to recover costs from a solar rooftop, as it exists today, is quite long, experts add.
