Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy will install 60 more solar radiation monitoring stations across the country and also introduce a scheme to encourage people to generate power from rooftop installations, a top official said today.
The move is aimed at enabling states and developers of solar power projects take investment decisions based on scientific rationale.
"We have already set up 51 solar monitoring stations for assessment of solar power in the country, which we are going to expand…60 more such stations shall come, and very soon entire country would be covered," the ministry Joint Secretary Tarun Kapoor said while addressing the 11th Green Power conclave-2012 organised here by CII.
The stations have equipment to record all types of data on radiation, from sun, especially at sites that fall in zones receiving higher direct solar radiation in a view to generate investment-grade solar radiation data.
The ministry has assigned the task of solar radiation monitoring to C-WET, Chennai, as centralised data collection now being done there.
MNRE is also looking to give a subsidy push to the rooftop projects in renewables and is mulling a special scheme for the purpose.
"We are coming out with a separate scheme to give a push to rooftop. We want to open out this sector in such a manner that people can generate power from their roofs for themselves and put surplus power directly into the grid, without it being stored in batteries first," he said.
People should be able to generate power at the cost of Rs 8 to 9 per unit and with some subsidy it should come down to Rs 5 to 6 per unit and get stabilised over next 25 years, Kapoor said.
Rooftop has the potential to change the face of power generation in India, it is for the power distribution companies to understand its importance, he added.
