Being a part of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, India has committed to expanding to 40% by the year 2030 in the contribution of installed capacity of electric power from non-fossil-fuel sources.
The rooftop solar with RTS plant installed majorly on the roof of a building along with included open contiguous land where the live electricity connection has been provided by the concern DISCOMS.
The Government, on 19th February 2019 approved Phase-II of “Grid Connected Rooftop and Small Solar Power Plants Programme” for gaining a cumulative capacity by 2022 of 40 GW RTS. In Phase-II, it is considered that DISCOMs and its local offices as the nodal points for implementation of the RTS programme.
The key objectives here are to promote grid-connected RTS in all consumer segments, to bring rapid deployment of RTS, to create awareness, HR development, capacity etc. and develop additional RTS capacity of 38000 MW in the country by the year 31.12.2022.
There were significant issues seen in Phase 1 due to which Phase 2 was introduced, and the considerable components of Phase 2 were Component A and Component B.
Let us understand more about component A: Setting up of 4k MW of grid-connected to the rooftop solar projects in the residential premises with central financial assistance:
Suppose the residential sector has maximum up to 3 kW capacity. In that case, CFA will have 40% of benchmark cost, which may differ as per the general category States/UTs and special category state/UTs.
If the residential sector is having above 3 kW capacity and up to 10 kW capacity, CFA will be 40% up to 3 kW plus 20% for RTS system above 3 kW and up to 10 kW
If Group housing societies/RWA for up to 500 kWp@ 10kWp/house with the upper limit being inclusive of individual rooftop plants, CFA will be 20% here.
MNRE will align capacity for installation of RTS System in the residential sector by DISCOMS in the ensuing year.
The implementing body shall invite Expression of Interest for empanelment of agencies for supply, testing, installation, testing & commissioning of RTS system in a residential area. To ensure quality and post-installation services, only manufacturers and system integrators fulfilling financial criteria and pre-determined would allow participating in the bidding process.
The beneficiary will have the option of installing the RTS system through any of these empanelled vendors at the net of CFA amount. The vendor will claim the CFA through implementing agency, but in the case of the RESCO model, the benefit of the CFA is pass on to the customer end in the form of a reduced tariff.
The executing body or designated agency may inspect the installed plants along with ongoing installation. If in case the systems are not as per standards, the Vendor or the Firm not liable to participate in tenders for Government supported projects.
If the firm/company joins another existing or starts/join a new firm/company, the company automatically is blacklisted. The beneficiary who will be interested in installing RTS plants will have to submit their application online or to the local office of the concerned DISCOM.
The complete process of receiving proposals, processing them and giving approvals would be IT-enabled except in those DISCOMs where the Online Portal is not developed. The SPIN portal will be made available to the DISCOMs to aggregate/register the demand of consumers in their operational area.
The consumer end will pay only the balance amount, excluding CFA portion, to the empanelled vendor. The CFA is released through DISCOMs to the empanelled vendor after inspection of RTS plant and commissioning.
CFA will not be available for different categories such as educational, social, industrial sectors and Government as the beneficiaries in these sectors are high tariff paying consumers and adoption of solar would be economically beneficial for them even without CFA.
The capacity eligible for an incentive to DISCOMs would cover the entire RTS capacity installed including the ability installed without CFA and with CFA.
While almost all States have approved regulations of net metering, for this programme, the States may follow the metering method prescribed in the Tariff policy or as approved by the respective Electricity Regulator.
