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New Energy World
New Energy World embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low carbon technologies.
The evolution of rooftop solar energy in India
10/7/2024
10 min read
Feature
Oxford Energy Senior Research Fellow Mohua Mukherjee explains where rooftop solar (RTS) fits in today’s energy sector in India. Why are RTS projects lagging far behind utility-scale solar projects in the country? What is being done by the government to increase the pace of RTS installations and why might it succeed?
The Indian economy is growing at one of the fastest rates in the world, around 7% per year. Growth, combined with unprecedented heat waves and longer spells of hot weather, has pushed up the demand for electricity to all-time highs, sometimes with month-on-month increases of 10%. India’s target is to have 500 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030, of which 230 GW will be solar. However, doing this with ground-mounted projects would mean utilising 75,000 km2 of India’s land mass for solar generation.
About 81% of India’s current solar capacity is already ground mounted. Disputes over land use are slowly increasing. Therefore, it is imperative to boost India’s grid-connected rooftop solar (RTS) capacity so that ambitious solar targets can be achieved smoothly.
In February 2024, the Indian government announced a $9bn plan, called Surya Ghar Yojana (SGY), to accelerate the installation of RTS on 10 million residential rooftops of low- and middle-income households. This would also mainstream the clean energy transition by expanding clean energy access to new segments of the population.