Sunshine to Electrify India

Sumit Verma
Why adoption rate on rooftop solar panel is low in India?
• Indian Govt. target’s 175 GW of installed
renewal power by 2022
• To offset rising shortage in power generation ,
predominantly driven by coal supply shortages, high
level of transmission and distribution losses, and poor
financial health of utilities
• Due to high land mass - 100 GW is allocated towards
Solar power, out of which 40 GW is towards deployment
of roof top projects
• Current Roof Top Solar generation in India is 1861 MW
• Projections show that it is poised to grow to 14 GW by
2022 at current pace (Bridge to India doc -2017Data) Source : Climate Group report
• There will be gap of 26 GW based on current run rate

Its evident that , in spite of potential , the trajectory / current run rate is slower than what is required to reach 40 GW
Consumers
• Lack of awareness
• High capital cost
• Lack of access to finance
• Issues with roof ownership
• Roof Lock-in 25 years
• Quality of installation – lack of reliable developers
• Need for regular maintenance
• Delay in getting approval for net-metering
• Cap of sanctioned load
• Quality of Grid integration – grid standards, anti-
islanding protection etc.
• Long payback period
 Distributors
• Loss of revenue from RTS system
owners( primarily high-paying consumer
categories)
• Lack of trained staff
• Higher variability at distribution transformer
level
• Lack of incentives to promote
RTS( Transmission charges, capacity charges
etc. are exempted)
• Grid integration, load management,
unscheduled request of commissioned
capacity for peak load
• Lack of awareness at operating level( Junior
Engineer/Assistant Engineer)
 Developers/Suppliers
• Lack of access to finance
• Fragmented distribution of installations, resulting higher cost of
installation
• Ownership of rooftop
• Delay in regulatory approval
• Availability of shadow free area
• Cap on sanctioned load
• Credit worthiness of consumer
• 90% import from China – cost play
• Lack of Solar training institutes.
• No incentive for research, innovation or set up a manufacturing plant.

• No manufacturing capabilities of Solar cells, Invertors and storage

systems
Value chain analysis of a Vendor – On grid
model
Source PV panel

Procure Micro-
Inverter
Power
Optimizer

Liaison with
Govt Electric
distributor and
Netmetering

Install and
Handover

Maintenance
Financier
• Credit worthiness of
consumers
• Small size of rooftop
projects
• Lack of Legal
enforceability
• Access to consumers
• Transaction Cost
Approach to gather information and find out
impediments to adoption
• Spoke / Interviewed with
• Manufactures of PV panels ( Vipul Enterprise , Himachal Pradesh )
• Distributors / Suppliers of services ( Echo soch etc. )
• Consumers ( RWA , Nitesh Forest Hill, Bangalore )

• Sample Interview Questions but not limited to

• How do you get sales lead i.e. channels of lead generation? How many are converted?
• How do you price customer? What are the different models of solar installation for households?
• What is the cost structure of a project?
• Why are customers not interested in installing solar panel, when the payback time is less than 3 years.
• What are bottlenecks for running a solar installation business?
Appendix 1 : Supplier Quote
To validate the root causes we have found
through our analysis, we have closely worked
with few vendors and received quotations.
Here the sample quotation. Using this
quotation we can infer that
1. High capex and inconsistent pricing,
creating barrier for adoption
2. Need extensive collaboration to multiple
and diverse activities, making adoption is
lower
3. Time consuming process for closing a deal
for a service provide
Appendix 2:Current Status RTS State wise

Source : Bridge to India Report

Source : Climate Group report
India Rooftop Solar Map 2017
References
• CEEW Analysis, June 2018
• Neeti Ayog_report-175-GW-RE, 31 May 2015
• Draft Scheme for Scaling Up Rooftop IDG 1 , 09 10 2017
• Solar Power in India - Preparing to Win ATKearny
• The-Indian-Sunshine-The-Solar-Energy-Landscape-in-India