Thursday, January 30, 2014: The state of Karnataka will soon see a refurbished solar energy policy that will ensure that State power utilities buy every unit of solar energy being generated by households and entrepreneurs. The mini contributors will be then paid as per a fixed unit rate. In this way, individual households and enterprises that generate their own solar power can share any surplus with the State grid, and gain monthly cash returns for the same. The scheme was revealed by Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee and Energy Secretary Amita Prasad at the concluding session of the CII Partnership Summit.
“The government will purchase every single unit generated from any source in the State. The consumers will get a cheque delivered to them in case of supply to the grid.” Amita Prasad was quoted as saying. In this way households and entrepreneurs will be encouraged to partly or fully generate their own power requirements. The solar power generating homes will have a meter installed that would measure the internal usage and contribution to the grid.
It must be noted that Tamil Nadu too boasts of a similar plan. “This was one of the power-starved State’s attempts to mitigate the hole its huge farm energy subsidy was creating, currently at Rs 45000 million and heading towards Rs 70000 million in the coming years.” said Kaushik Mukherjee. “The State planned to have 2,000 MW of solar energy capacity by 2020. The policy was ironing out many practical elements of implementation. The State would be self-sufficient in power by 2016 and it is now in the process of adding new capacity of 3,000 MW to the grid.” he added.
