How to Choose an On-Grid Solar System for Your Residential Home?

India has always been blessed with abundant sunshine. Over the years we have been successful in harnessing the sunlight to power our nation. An estimated solar installation of 46GW till date has put our nation at the forefront of solar adoption in global arena.

An ambitious target of installing 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030 has further set the path towards a greener future for the country.

We have always been open towards initiating and adopting new ways to promote solar energy in the country. On-grid systems with Net-Metering is one such initiative which has massively helped towards the adoption of distributed solar energy across the nation.

On-grid system with Net-Metering removes the compulsion of having a battery pack in a solar system. Net-Metering works as a virtual storage for the surplus units, which are not consumed at the plant location but by feeding those units into the electricity grid.

The units fed into the grid are then subtracted from the units consumed at the end of every billing cycle. The arrangement helps the consumer in deriving maximum benefits from the solar system without incurring the additional costs of installing batteries.

Reduction in capex with on-grid systems have made capacities less than 10kWp financially viable and has spurred the demand for solar systems amongst the residential consumers. Nowadays solar system has become an integral part of any residential building which is in the planning stage. There is an equal demand for solar from the households with constructed houses.

Considering an on-grid solar system that has an average life of 25 years, it becomes very crucial to get the right system.

The journey begins with understanding the unit(kWh) consumption pattern of a household planning to get solar installed at their premises. An average unit(kWh) consumption pattern is derived after noting down the household consumption across the seasons in a year.

The average units derived from the exercise should bethen mapped with the generation potential of a solar system. The generation of a solar system is primarily dependent upon the solar irradiance falling onto a geographical region. Taking note of the solar irradiance in our country we can safely assume that there would be an average generation of 4 units(kWh) of electricity from 1 kWp of system on a given day.

Once the plant capacity requirement has been figured out, we need to proceed ahead in shortlisting the right system integrators to do the site inspection and subsequent installation for us.

It is of paramount importance that we choose the right integrator to do the task for us, as the on-grid system is expected to function for many years. Some of the cues that we can look out in a suitable system integrator can be: -

The basic idea behind scrutinizing the integrator prior to placing the order should be to gauge the capability to deliver the right solution and longevity to provide after sale support.

Post shortlisting the installers the next stage involves the site assessment to check the feasibility of the roof to accommodate solar capacity arrived after calculating the average electricity consumption.

In case of residential houses, the site assessment takes a centre stage as the roof area available is less and whatever area is available it further needs to be checked for shadows from nearby objects.

As a ballpark a 100sqft. of area is required to install a 1 kWp on-grid solar system.

The site assessment is done by the solar installer and a subsequent proposal with design and bill of material is rolled out to the customer post assessment.

In the interest of space utilization, the user can always opt for High Wattage panels having rating of more than 500Wp in the Bill of Material of the solar system. Higher wattage ensures that more capacity is getting installed in less space thus freeing up area on the roof for other activities.

Since for a household rooftop is an area which is utilized for multiple activities, it becomes vital to utilize the roof accordingly. On-grid solutions that come with elevated structures (6ft. and above) works best in a residential setting as the area beneath the solar panels can be further utilized for recreational activities.

At times the aim of a residential user is to beautify the roof along with deriving the savings through On-grid solar system. In this scenario the user can also opt for solar pergola solutions which combines the beauty of a pergola structure with solar panels.

The structure selected by the user needs to withstand cross wind speeds of atleast 150 Km/Hr. The system installer should be willing to share suitable reports to prove the same.

Once the proposal is accepted and capacity is finalized the next step involves application of Net-metering at the local electricity department. As the plant is on-grid in nature a Bi-directional meter is installed by the local electricity department to record the surplus units supplied by the solar system.

Post the installation and commissioning of the plant a user can also opt for Annual Maintenance Package to offload all the plant maintenance related activities to the system installer.

-  Rohit Khanduja, Residential Solar Expert, HomeScape by Amplus Solar