Harnessing Solar energy, Options for India

subsidy if the loss of grid connection is fairly high. This system should be promoted to
reduce diesel usage in buildings and regions where the grid is highly unreliable.
Given the frequent power outages, a solar rooftop PV solution needs to be carefully
considered and incentivised for households. A token financial incentive such as a discount in
the monthly utility bill might suffice to encourage citizens to install solar PV to meet a
minimum household load.
Clear and easy regulations should be implemented for individual customers to avail of the
tariff.
With the objective of disincentivising the usage of diesel and promoting solar PV and distributed
generation, policy makers must scrutinise the possibility of tax imposition based on capacity of
generation from diesel in commercial buildings. The current subsidy scheme for off-grid
applications, although generous, cannot aid investors proposing installation of systems with battery.
And, as mentioned earlier, systems without battery may not serve the purpose satisfactorily.
Moreover, in this application, as electricity is supplied from three sources – solar PV, diesel and grid
– monitoring and metering will be a challenge.
3.4. Estimation of Potential for RTPV Systems
An attempt to estimate the potential of cutting down on diesel use in commercial establishments
using RTPV was made for Bangalore, one of India’s major cities. Table 22 calculates the percentage
of abatement possible using the total commercial space available and office electrical intensity in the
respective cities. Owing to abundant commercial space in Bangalore, lower office electrical intensity
and lower diesel consumption, potential for diesel use reduction is only 60.6 million units annually.
Extrapolating this to all major cities in India, the total potential of RTPV systems was determined
(see Appendix 3: Estimation of Commercial Floor Space Available, 2006) for individual cities (Table
23). It was found that a capacity of about 140 MW p of solar PV systems could be installed in India; a
figure that more than meets the government’s official target of 100 MW p for all small grid-connected
systems.
Solar Photovoltaic Applications CSTEP | Page 87