Government ‘indifferent’ to give boost to solar energy

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 15

Even as National Energy Conservation Day was celebrated like a routine event every year, there is no perceptible change at the grassroots level.

Despite the Union and the state governments launching various schemes to promote solar energy, it is confined to mega commercial projects.

The Union Government and its agencies also offered subsidised equipment for harnessing solar energy that remains largely untapped here.

This is apparent as a large number of residential townships and colonies have come up across the bypasses of the city, but the majority of the houses are without solar energy.

An industrialist, Raman Gupta, said the reason was the government's indifferent approach to popularising solar energy and its economic benefits among consumers.

He said thousands of houses were being constructed every year, but not even one per cent of these were being covered under solar energy, which is available in plenty.

A construction-material dealer, Harpinder Singh, said following a boom in construction activity, people were investing lakhs of rupees on the construction of houses, but were not investing anything on reducing energy expenditure. He attributed this to lack of awareness among people and minimum efforts being made by the government and its agencies in this regard.

A spurt in construction activity in the residential sector is visible on the Batala road, the Majitha road, in Ajnala, Loharka, Fatehgarh Churriyan besides the Amrisar-Jalandhar GT road. All these roads have seen springing up of a number of townships in the past some years apart from hundreds of unplanned localities.

The state government had released a draft policy on net metering for solar energy in August 2013. The salient features of the draft policies were that anyone can set up a solar rooftop within a capacity range of one kw and 500 kw, maximum capacity of the Roof Top Solar PV system would not be more than 80 per cent of the sanctioned connected load, injection of power from the rooftop solar PV system would not be more than 90 per cent of the consumption from the licensee’s supply by the consumer in a year.

The net-metering facility was to be implemented for the consumers of the PSPCL who intend to encourage green solar energy and set up solar PV plants at available places on rooftops. Individual households, industries, offices, commercial establishments, institutions, residential complexes and others were eligible for the project capacity from minimum 1 kw up to 500 kw with/without battery back-up. Consumers will generate solar power for self consumption and can feed excess power into the grid.

After the Union Government declared the holy city as a solar city, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) took the lead in the city by installing the solar power system at Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport. There is a provision of approximately 400 kwp of power generation through these solar panels.