India’s low uptake of rooftop solar systems – often touted as the pathway to clean, decentralised electricity –is largely due to limited electricity consumption and existing subsidies for coal-fired electricity that makes even subsidised solar power expensive, suggests the results of a first-of-its-kind study spanning 14,000 households across 21 states.
The analysis was conducted by researchers at the Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a Delhi-based thinktank and made public on Thursday.
Were all rooftops in India’s estimated 25-30 crore households to have solar panels installed, it would amount to 637 gigawatt (1 gigawatt (GW) is 1000 megawatt (MW)) – or about five times the total renewable energy capacity already installed. However were solar panel installations restricted to account for the electricity actually consumed by households, this would fall 80% to about 118 GW. India currently has about 11 GW of installed rooftop solar capacity, of which only 2.7 GW are in residential units and the rest in commercial or industrial spaces. The government aspired to a target of installing 40GW.
