Saturday, August 24, 2013: According to the rooftop solar systems facilitated by the Andhra Pradesh Government, household consumers can now become self sufficient in generating their own power and even sell the surplus to the state electricity board.
The Non Renewable Energy Development Corporation (Nredcap) is going to tell households to promote renewable power consumption to promote the state’s development. A 1 kwH rooftop solar capacity panel comes at a fair price with 50 per cent subsidy by the central government and the Andhra Pradesh Government shares another 30 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.
Apart from this, the state government has extended another 20 per cent subsidy to 3 kwH capacity while the MNRE is working on a similar proposal.
These household units will no more be considered to be off-grid systems and the state energy department has already brought about a policy to integrate the systems with the state power grids via “net metering” wherein consumers can sell their surplus to discoms.
The utility system is installed with a bi-directional meter which keeps the record of the import and export of the particular power service. To use this, consumers would, however, install a 3 phase power system into the household. The application form and the detailed procedures are available with the AP power discoms website.
According to Kamalakar Babu, the managing director and vice chairman of NREDCAP, the state has already written to the MNRE to grant enough subsidies that would support a 10 MW capacity and which can translate into 10,000 rooftop solar system of 1 kwH each every year.
