Chandigarh would soon become the first city in the country to provide its residents an opportunity, to estimate the potential capacity of SPV power plant that could be installed on the rooftop of their houses.
The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) would on March 12, launch a first-of-kind cloud based open-source Web-GIS Tool for estimating rooftop solar power potential for Chandigarh.
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has developed the Web-GIS (geographic information system) tool and Chandigarh Renewable Energy Science and Technology Promotion Society (CREST) has assisted TERI to embark on the unique initiative in the city.
Aimed at promoting usage of solar energy by facilitating the consumers, the open source Web-GIS tool will enable the residents as well as the concerned Administration/Government for planning their investments in rooftop Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) power plant projects.
With the formal launch of Web-GIS Tool for estimating rooftop solar power potential in Chandigarh, the city residents would be able to ascertain the viability, capacity and investment needed to install a rooftop solar photovoltaic power plant at their homes.
“The MNRE will launch the Web-GIS tool in New Delhi on March 12. Chandigarh would the first city in the country where the Web-GIS tool for estimating rooftop solar power potential would be made accessible to the residents,” said Santosh Kumar, CEO of Chandigarh Renewable Energy, Science and Technology Promotion Society (CREST) and Director UT Science and Technology Department while talking to The Pioneer.
He said, “A map of the entire city showing the buildings those have SPV power plant installation potential would be available online. The residents can visit the CREST website for details on the initiative. The first-of-its-kind unique initiative would enable the denizens to know the details like cost, capacity and viability of rooftop SPV power plant that can be established at the rooftops of their houses.”
The tool will showcase solar resource potential in a user-friendly format so that the consumers can investigate their locations of interest and perform pre-processed analysis.
Besides facilitating the residents, the Web-GIS tool would also assist CREST in planning of installation of SPV power plant projects on various buildings here. The tool will act as Decision Support System (DSS) to carry out the pre-feasibility assessment of establishing a rooftop SPV power plant system on a particular location. It will help us to assess the viability of any rooftop projects based on possible business models and investments, added Santosh.
The CREST has so far installed SPV power plants at more than 15 Government buildings in Chandigarh. And, from eight SPV power plants, more than 2,80,000 units of electricity was produced last year.
Recently, the MNRE had, given a go-ahead to CREST for installation of SPV power plants in 230 private houses of the city.
The CREST has also planned to launch a new scheme for the city residents, where they can install smaller capacity SPV power plants of one kw, two kw, three kw, five kw capacity etc on their rooftop and can also avail 30 per cent subsidy of MNRE.
Also, 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 Rs 25,000.