Even as the “model solar city” project of Chandigarh has gained momentum in the past one year, the initiative of tapping solar energy at home has failed to attract the city residents.
Despite the subsidy of 30 per cent provided by CREST (Chandigarh Renewal Energy Science and Technology Society) on solar panels for first 100 applicants, the residents continue to overlook the idea of utilising solar power to generate electricity.
The scheme launched by CREST last year for installation of solar panels in residential areas, especially to use exiting inverters as solar inverters at home, has received a lukewarm response from residents with only about 60 applications received in more than seven months.
The high investment cost and lack of awareness among the denizens are seen as major factors for the failure of the UT’s initiative.
As per UT’s scheme, those residents who have inverter and battery system at their houses to deal with power cut can just retrofit their existing system with solar panel and charge controller, and they can start using solar energy by spending about `25,000.
“So far, about 60 applications were received from the residents. But, we expect that more citizens will come forward to adopt this method of electricity generation through solar panels at their homes,” said Santosh Kumar, Director Science and Technology Department and CEO CREST while talking to The Pioneer.
He said, “The initiative is yet to get popular among the residents. Once solar panels are installed in 100 houses, it will definitely get popular. Besides, the Department is organising awareness programmes to popularize the utilisation of solar energy.”
The master plan to make Chandigarh a solar city, which has been approved by the Centre, targets to reduce the present energy consumption in residential sectors by 15 percent till 2015 and 20 percent by the year 2018. Also, it targets 5 MW electricity generation by 2015 and 10 MW by 2018 through roof top solar energy based electricity generation.
Every year, there is an increase of 20–30 percent in energy requirement in the residential sectors and 10-15 percent in commercial sectors of Chandigarh. This has led to a situation where there are both, energy as well as peak deficits in the city, stated the master plan report.
Under UT’s solar city master plan, grid interactive solar voltage power plant (GISVPP) will be installed in all major government buildings here and steps would be taken to promote use of solar energy in residential areas.
Notably, the MNRE had chosen Chandigarh in 2008 for developing it into a model solar city. The Centre had also given a go –ahead to CREST for the installation of SPV (solar photovoltaic) power plants in 230 private houses of the city. A new scheme was planned for the city residents, through which they can install smaller capacity SPV power plants of 1 kw, 2 kw, 3 kw, 5 kw capacity etc on their rooftop and can avail 30 per cent subsidy of the Centre.
As of now, 2 MWp SPV plants on 27 different buildings have been installed in Chandigarh and another 3 MWp SPV plant is under installation. This year, CREST has planned to install SPV power plants on 35 government schools of Chandigarh besides covering all police stations and E-Sampark Centers in Chandigarh.