In recent years, Karnataka has been facing severe power crises with hydel and thermal power generation unable to keep pace with consumer demand. In this scenario, the State government is looking to solar power generation to mitigate the problem. It has now amended its 2014-21 solar policy and set an ambitious target of generating 6,000 MW of solar power by March 2021. This is in keeping with the tariff policy announced by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy last year.
The current installed capacity, including rooftop, is pegged at 385 MW.
A Cabinet meeting presided by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday approved the changes in the policy to give encouragement to harness solar energy. The State’s solar energy potential is estimated in excess of 24,700 MW.
As per the tariff policy and targets fixed by MNRE to the State, the solar energy should constitute eight per cent of the total energy consumption, excluding hydro energy, by March 2022. The Centre’s policy envisages that 40 per cent of the solar generation should be through rooftop, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T.B. Jayachandra told presspersons.
The changes in the policy included implementation of projects with distributed generation approach spread over the State. Now, most of the solar projects concentrated around Bengaluru.
It has decided to restrict the maximum project capacity of solar rooftop to regulations issued by KERC from time to time; solar generation on rooftop on gross/net metering basis regulations issued by KERC from time to time; capacity of solar parks should be limited to maximum of 100 MW at a single location; subject to overall limits of 200 MW a taluk from all sources of generation, excluding projects implemented on solar rooftop.
It was noted that by 2021 the solar tariffs would reduce to ₹7.5 per unit. But in the recent bidding in Karnataka, t he tariffs have come down to ₹5.5 per unit for distributed generation and ₹4.8 per unit for large scale generation plants.
