Thursday, March 13, 2014: With the growing concerns in environment and exploration of cleaner resources to produce energy, many research organisations have been working to promote recovery and reliability of renewable energy. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) launched for the first time, a cloud based open-source Web-GIS Tool that can estimate rooftop solar sower potential for Indian cities.
The prime reason for such an initiative is to create a ‘high performing and flexible’ Web-GIS tool to collectively estimate solar power prospects for ‘solar’ cities, in the country. The first city to witness this tool is the Union Territory of Chandigarh, with other cities to follow soon. The Web tool was launched at New Delhi conference, titled, “Accelerated Deployment of Rooftop Solar PV systems in India” on Wednesday.
According to an India Education report, the initiative is supported by Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (SSEF) with support from the Chandigarh Renewable Energy Science and Technology Promotion Society (CREST), the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Shivraj Patil, the governor of Punjab and administrator of Chandigarh said, “We have taken a decision to install rooftop solar energy devices in government buildings in Chandigarh to become a model solar city.”
He emphasised that the implementation of solar energy is easy and every household can invest in solar products by way of government subsidies. While, there are many cost-effective technologies that are available for mass generation and use of solar energy. With land costs in cities raising high there is a need of rooftop solar power units, specifically in metros. The government is further providing subsidies to private sector, to initiate the production of renewable energy.
