Mr Tarun Kapoor joint secretary of ministry of new and renewable energy is working on a special policy for roof top solar units.

Speaking at Intersolar India, a conference of the solar industry, Mr Kapoor said that the government is working on several options. To aid policy formulation, a brainstorming meeting of all the electricity distribution companies (discoms) will take place in New Delhi on December 20th 2011

The discussion would revolve around why, even with a 30% capital subsidy, the ‘roof top solar' has not taken off in India.

Mr Kapoor said that “We will come up with something very special for roof tops.” Today, the economics works out very well. With 30% subsidy (on the cost of equipment), the cost of generation would work out to INR 7.

He observed that ‘Net metering', where a household could both receive power from and feed into the grid and be billed only for the Net consumption, is very important for the development of roof-top solar units.

He said that the industry is also not attuned to roof-top solar. He said that “I have been telling them ‘please look at roof tops adding that the industry itself is not much aware of the potential.”

Mr Kapoor said that the Government was confident that the country would have the targeted 1,100 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2013. Stressing on the need for gathering of data of solar irradiance, Mr Kapoor said that the Government has installed 51 solar stations across the country till now. A massive program is under way to do solar resource assessment all across India.

(Sourced from BL)