Jamia Millia Islamia leads the way, opts for solar power illumination

While India has drawn up ambitious plans for building up scale in renewable energy space in the last four years, with Solar taking 100 GW share out of the targeted 170 GW by 2025,  there is one specific segment within the larger basket which seems to remain a non-starter – rooftop panel. The government had set a target of achieving 40 GW of solar power capacity by 2022 but by the end of March 2018, the total installed capacity has been a tad shy of 2GW. This clearly calls for a scorching pace of growth or a massive miss, for this segment in the remaining four years if the 40 GW target has to be met.

With a reported growth of over 80 percent in the rooftop installed capacity registered in the last year (according to a report by Bridge To India), the segment at last has begun to show some preliminary signs of momentum building and here the support is coming more from the corporate and institutional segment than residential. On the institution side one more prestigious name is going to be added to the list with Delhi’s well known institute Jamia Millia Islamia deciding to opt for solar power to meet internal requirements. The company has decided to install a 2.5 MW solar power plant in its campus.  “Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) is all set to have the largest rooftop solar plant for which an MoU has been signed with Sun Source Energy, a Noida-based company. The company will install more than 2.50 MWP solar photo voltaic system on RESCO Model (where the consumer does not usually have to pay anything upfront) at zero cost to the university,” a recent release from the institution said.

According to the details available of the MoU inked, the cost of power to the institute would be less than Rs 3.50 per unit. The contract has been signed for a period of 25 years, which is the usual period in these deals.  “The step will result in saving not only money that the university spends on its electricity bills but also…reduce carbon footprint,” commented Talat Ahmad, VC of the university.

With their vast covered as well as open areas, institutions need to take the lead on rooftop solar, and every single known name, like Jamia Milia in this case, matters. 

By Ritwik Sinha

Published on: Apr 2, 2018