Debt and equity providers are essential in solar business, added Bhattacharyya
The Rs.24,000 crore PLI scheme would ensure upward integration from polysilicon to modules and will help India in becoming a net exporter of modules, says Lalit Bohra, Joint Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
“This Rs.24,000 crore PLI scheme is going to be a game changer, and will boost solar module capacity in India,” he told a seminar on ‘Renewable Energy (RE) Transition for Commercial and Industrial Consumers’ organized by FICCI on 3 Mar 2023.
Bohra also elucidated several demand-side and supply-side interventions by the Government. These include renewable power obligations on the discoms to ensure that discoms have a certain percentage of their electricity from the renewable source.
Besides, he underlined the waiver of the interstate transmission service charges to allow developers to establish plants in any part of the country and financial support for the residential rooftop scheme for the decentralized RE generation.
On the supply side interventions by the Government, he pointed to mega solar parks set up in the country, the ‘Must Run’ status of the RE projects and the PLI scheme.
However, Pinaki Bhattacharyya, Senior Member, FICCI Renewable Energy CEOs Council, has cautioned that the RE business is “very capital intensive”, requiring “Rs.4 crores of capital for every megawatt of solar”.
As a result, both debt and equity providers are essential, added Bhattacharyya, also the MD & CEO, Amp Energy India.
The vital thing is to be technology agnostic. “As we move forward, we also see a transition from solar to wind to hybrid and hybrid storage,” he said.
Somesh Kumar, Partner & Leader, E&Y, has also highlighted several barriers to the accelerated adoption of RE. These include energy banking rules, which in some cases have a banking period of less than six months, charges in the form of cross-subsidy surcharges and additional charges, among others.
Kumar pointed out that policy and enabling environment are helping consumers with various choices and move towards procuring RE power in a more competitive and more accessible manner. fiinews.com
