Energetica India Magazine: september 2020

SOLAR POWER How solar energy can help the manufacturing sector bounce back by hedging their energy costs Industries invite very high fixed costs with reference to their monthly power bills. Solar power can come to their rescue by reducing their bills by upto 80%.With Levelised Cost of Electricity at less than Rs.2/Kwh, corporates are rising up to the challenge of coming up to speed technically and commercially towards investing in solar in-site and off-site solutions. 52 energetica INDIA- September_2020 Puneet Goyal Co-Founder of SunAlpha Energy Introduction: Covid -19 pandemic has brought the world into a standstill and has impacted almost every sector. Now with the unlock 4.0 when the things are settling down, every industry can cope up the damage caused by the lockdown as per their capabilities and requirements. Solar energy sector has been highly affected in these unprecedented times. There is a lot of uncertainty in the industry cur- rently and the way the Indian solar en- ergy sector comes back from this crisis will decide how quickly India achieves its renewable energy target of 100 GW by 2022. Solar rooftop sector has been badly affected because of two reasons: one is its labour cost and other one is its dependence on the country’s commer- cial and industrial sectors. Today in India the power demand has reduced by 25- 30 per cent. This decline in demand with reduced collection and slow recovery will adversely impact already stressed distribution companies by creating a cash gap of approx. Rs. 40,000 cr. In- dustries invite very high fixed costs with reference to their monthly power bills. Solar power can come to their rescue by reducing their bills by upto 80%. The reduction is dependent on the following factors: 1. Load and Consumption profile 2. State policy 3. Technology used 4. Design With Levelised Cost of Electricity at less than Rs.2/Kwh, corporates are rising up to the challenge of coming up to speed technically and commercially towards investing in solar in-site and off-site solu- tions. Impact due to Covid -19: Due to covid-19 and nationwide lock- down, ongoing Solar projects in the country have come to a halt, power com- panies are facing disruption and devel- opers are concerned about the delays their projects are facing because of the production slowdown in China. Even to- day, the solar industry is relying on Chi- na for around 80% of its requirement of solar supply. All imports related to solar power equipment in January 2020 had declined by about 70% as compared to January 2019. Industry players have been facing delays in procurement of modules, solar cells, and other com- ponents all because of covid-19. Also, about 85% of the labour in the solar en- ergy sector are migrants, many of which have returned to their villages and are likely to be away for some time until the lockdown will be completely lifted. Challenges post lockdown: Once the lockdown is over, the major impact in the performance of solar en- ergy plants will be availability of spares and manpower for maintenance. As the high wind season is approaching in the coming months planned maintenance will also become a challenge. Execu- tion work at new projects have come to a standstill. Even though force ma- jeure conditions will enable extension for completion period; migrant labours will take quite some time to reach proj- ect sites. Solar energy projects, unlike other infrastructure projects, hardly take 6-9 months to complete once land and evacuation facilities are available and this is only possible by deploying a large number of workforces for a shorter du- ration. Role of Solar Energy sector to bounce back the economy post Covid: