Delhi can lead the way

Delhi seems to be on way to shelving an ambitious house-top solar project. The idea was to have 1 MW of solar systems up on roof-tops of buildings in the capital but there are now fears that people with solar PV systems may run diesel or gas generators instead to feed power into the grid and profit from any difference!

This is a land where people resort to all means foul and fair to survive. Blame it on poverty or simply beating the system, people have found ways to tamper with meters or even steal them. If diesel, which is heavily subsidised - set at 32 percent below market value - can be used to make money, people will!

But surely there are ways to check such malpractices, as the India Environmental portal notes. 'It would not be impossible to at least check once when a system is installed as new meters would anyway have to be installed by utilities. Since the cost of solar is almost all in the investment of buying the actual module there would be little incentive for producing from diesel when the cost is already sunk in the solar module.'

A cap on how much can be fed, calculated on the basis of the capacity of the solar module (and its efficiency), would make any gains from cheating and using diesel miniscule. Periodical checks on the solar modules when the utilities are checking the meter could perhaps deter people from buying the modules and then selling them on. Panels that cannot be disconnected without the net-meter switching off could be a possibility as well.

With solar fast getting cheaper than diesel, things will change. India is producing power from solar cells more cheaply than by burning diesel, said a Bloomberg report in Jan. The cost of solar energy in India declined by 28 percent since December 2010, mainly due to a 51 percent drop in panel prices last year as the world’s 10 largest manufacturers, led by China’s Suntech Power Holdings Co., doubled output capacity.

By 2013, solar power will be as chep as Rs 8.78 a KWh compared to Rs 17 from diesel generators.

Time more cities came up with such projects and backed them with clear intention and will. Time also to lift subsidies on fossil fuels but (sigh) that's easier said than done. Let's hope Delhi will buck up and set up solar panels on housetops and lead the way for the rest of the nation.