ANNOUNCEMENTS
India has established its name in the Solar PV industry with installations more than 26 GW. It is because of this that India today stands fifth country in the world with highest Solar PV installations. However, the rooftop photovoltaic (RTPV) sector of India has contributed just 6.84% in the total Solar PV installations. The aim of this study is to identify a procedure which could accelerate the RTPV growth after identifying the bottlenecks inhibiting the growth. The analysis revealed that there are three main bottlenecks in the RTPV sector;- lack of standardization of the costs and associated quality, lack of interest of project developers and lack of enthusiasm from DISCOMs.
Further, it was realized that RTPV Demand aggregation in a cluster could actually assist in overcoming the bottlenecks. It could also reduce the costs of RTPV plants by 15-20 % approximately as it gets the benefit of economies of scale and reduced soft costs. The study further talks about the benefits of demand aggregation viz-a-viz the process of one to one business taking place between a customer and a project developer. It further talks in detail about the stakeholder mapping from the RTPV supply chain and the methodology for demand aggregation.
A pilot study was conducted in 14 commercial and industrial clusters of Delhi by following a top down approach. Techno commercial workshops were conducted for the industrial/commercial associations from which the total demand was aggregated. The RTPV potential was then identified using HelioScope post aggregating the demand. A solar potential of 4.32 MW demand was identified in all the clusters. The project developers were identified using RfQ as a transparent process.
In order to successfully achieve the ambitious target of 40 GW of RTPV by 2022, Demand Aggregation would play an inevitable role in the journey. It must be noted that currently all Demand Aggregation projects are carried from various green funds. Hence, developing an independent sustainable business model for Demand Aggregation would be the future scope.
Keywords: Solar Rooftop Photovoltaic, Demand Aggregation, DISCOMs
