Demand Aggregation Rooftop Solar — How It Can Help India to Achieve Its Solar Energy Target?

The Government of India has set ambitious targets to drive the shift towards renewable energy. In this regard, the government has targeted to achieve 100 GW solar capacity deployments by 2022 to achieve energy security from its abundant untapped solar resource. With regards to solar energy, the 100 GW target by 2022 consists of 60 GW of utility-scale and 40 GW of rooftop solar. Heretofore, proactive measures by the government have made it possible to get closer to the utility-scale target. On the other hand, the rooftop photovoltaic (RTPV) sector has seen slower progress despite high subsidies and incentives to consumers. Since the industrial and residential sectors cover more than half of total electricity consumption nationwide and have considerable roof area, these can be focused to meet the targets.

Challenges in Indian RTPV Sector

The RTPV sector is facing many challenges like

✔ Affordability among weaker economic segments

✔ High customer acquisition costs due to the distributed nature of the business

✔ Lack of awareness

✔ Know-how of what benefits RTPV systems can bring to consumers

✔ The unavailability of Renewable Energy Service Company(RESCO) model

The need of the hour is to find ways in boosting rooftop solar sector installations. One possible way is through demand aggregation rooftop solar.

Demand aggregation is the process of bringing together several potential RTPV consumers and then presenting this as a single group of customers to an installer or an investor.

How It Can Work?

➮ Several projects have shown that by aggregating demand, the problems of customer acquisition cost and lack of awareness could be solved. This can be done by targeting industrial unions and housing societies, all avenues where people of similar energy requirements and roof types can be brought together.

➮ There is an urgent need for the central and state governments, to provide the required policy support for demand aggregators. Incorporating demand aggregation models with the existing RTPV programs could be an added advantage to increase visibility and credibility.

➮ Community solar also can be considered as a demand aggregation tool, which is referred to as a solar installation that is collectively owned by more than one individual, and the units generated by that system are offset in their respective accounts according to their stake in the system.

Final Words

Demand Aggregation can potentially help installers increase scale and reduce customer acquisition costs. This eventually benefits the customers by installing RTPV systems at a lower cost. To engage in such community-driven projects, it is very likely that these motivated consumers will also bring others on board. This is the need of the hour for the RTPV sector in India to move closer to meet the target of 40 GW, if not for fulfilling it.