J&K approves 200 MW rooftop solar project in Jammu city

The Administrative Council (AC) headed by LG Manoj Sinha, has approved the development of 200 MW of grid-connected rooftop solar power plants in Jammu City. These plants hope to take the optimal advantage of the solar irradiance in the high resource region of Jammu and Kashmir. They will come up as part of the ‘Solar City Mission’ in the Jammu region under the Central Government’s Grid-connected Rooftop Solar Scheme, Phase-II meant for the residential sector.

The meeting was also attended by Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, Advisor to the LG, Arun Kumar Mehta, Chief Secretary and Nitishwar Kumar, Principal Secretary to LG.

The plan is to install 200 MW grid-tied rooftop solar power plants on 50,000 residential buildings in Jammu city at a cost of Rs 1040 crore. The project will be developed by the Jammu and Kashmir Energy Development Agency (JAKEDA). The rooftop solar project will be completed by March, 2024.As always, the expected life of these is 25 years.

Subsidies will be provided to the individual residential household at Rs. 58,739, Rs. 53,995, Rs. 52,594, and Rs. 51,309 for Category-A (Up to 1 kW), Category-B (> 1 kW to 2 kW), Category-C (> 2kW up to 3 kW), and Category-D (> 3 kW up to 10 kW), respectively.

The central government subsidy through the Central Sector Scheme (CSS) will support 40% of the project cost and the state government subsidy will be 25% below 3 kW capacity. If the rooftop solar installation crosses 3kW, the central subsidy will remain at 20%.

The subsidy benefits will accrue to the households through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode only. ‘Net Metering’ will be employed to connect the rooftop solar to the grid system. The entire 200 MW rooftop solar project will generate about 280 million units of electricity every year and eliminate carbon emissions equivalent to 5.44 million tons. It will also support J&K in avoiding inter-state transmission losses of 224 million units.

The rooftop solar will help the Union Territory to bridge the power deficit and also ensure the DISCOMs to achieve their Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO). The government has projected that each MW of rooftop solar will generate 40 full time jobs for 25 years of skilled and high skilled nature. Then there will be secondary and tertiary employment opportunities. In total, 8000 jobs will be generated thanks to this push, across the solar cycle.

Jammu and Kashmir is presently generating a little over 20 MW of grid connected solar power.