Rooftop Solar: MNRE To Incentivize Discoms For Performance

Local discoms are not unable to approval filed allegedly due to technical issues.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has now decided to incentivize the power distribution companies (Discoms) in the country for their good performance in the rooftop solar business. The ministry also issued a set of guidelines on the same under the PM Surya Ghar scheme to bring a clarity on the incentivization intervention.

The ministry has already earmarked a total financial outlay of Rs 4,950 crore for the discoms for these incentives. The ministry said that the discoms will get these incentives for participating in public awareness exercises, branding and expediting the whole procedure of rooftop solar installations under the scheme.

“The Incentives to DISCOMs shall provide resources to the DISCOMs to participate in IEC and branding activities, create conducive regulatory and administrative mechanisms to ensure adherence to timelines for approvals (feasibility, commissioning, inspection, grievance redressal etc.), achieve targets for implementation, ensuring timely availability of net meters, saturation of RTS on government buildings, utilization of incentive for RTS dedicated activities, incentivizing field level staff through recognition and rewards and other measures that are to be undertaken by the State DISCOMs or other agencies for RTS deployment,” the MNRE norms read.

MNRE said the incentives to the discoms will be based on their achievement in installation of grid-connected rooftop solar. 

“…with the incentives being limited to the first additional 18,000 MW of rooftop solar capacity in the country (since the beginning of operation of Phase II programme). This incentive is pegged at 5% of applicable benchmark cost for capacity achieved above 10% and less than 15% of the installed base capacity, and 10% of the applicable benchmark cost for capacity achieved beyond 15% of the installed base capacity,” the norms read.

The norms said that incentives will be calculated on the basis of incremental rooftop solar capacity by the discoms from the installed base capacity within 12 months. 

“The Incentives to the DISCOMs would be available only for the addition of initial 18,000 MW RTS capacity in the country after 31st March 2019. In case, higher capacity is achieved by the DISCOMs leading to entitlement for higher incentive slab of 10%, the total incentives to the DISCOMs would be limited to the financial outlay available for incentive under the programme, irrespective of the total capacity achieved under the programme by any particular DISCOM,” the MNRE norms read.