Rooftops as energy farms
This is space utilisation at its best — using the terraces of residential and commercial buildings to generate solar power. In a novel initiative, Gujarat has commissioned two pilot projects in the state capital Gandhinagar, each generating 5 MW of solar power and is working towards extending this to five more cities over the next few months.
The cities of Vadodara, Mehsana, Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Surat will together take Gujarat’s solar rooftop power project capacity to 30MW. “These projects are still at a nascent stage,” says Rajendra Mistry senior executive (projects), Gujarat Power Corporation (GPCL), which is the nodal agency mandated by the state government for setting up solar power projects.
MICRO GENERATION
GPCL has invited bidders to buy the ‘request for proposal’ (RFP) documents for these five solar roof-top projects. The two pilot projects in the state capital have been developed under a public-private-partnership (PPP) model in collaboration with Azure Sun Energy India and Sun Edison.
“The successful implementation of the PPP transactions for the two Gandhinagar pilot projects, prompted the government to replicate the roof-top solar project in five other cities of Gujarat,” government sources say. The International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank is advising the government on the roll-out of these projects.
The Gandhinagar project is the first of its kind in the country, and aims to become a benchmark for green energy generation at the household-level.
Under the scheme, the solar rooftop project developer will build, finance, own, operate and maintain the solar photovoltaic system units, all of
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